Young Writers Society

The humid from last night’s thunderstorm condensed the morning breeze with a frigid, stinging stench. The chill could be enough to succeed every breath with miniature clouds of cold, burn your chest with the gentle graze of the icy wind as it travels through your lungs and towards the tips of your fingers.

The dawn was met by the sky’s dull hue, the sunrise being no more than a bright shade against what appears to be a celestial canvas of gray. The days of the Fall reach into an end- a point where trees, deprived of the leaves that define their animation, rose from nature’s surface like withered hands petrified as they stretch towards the sunlight; a moment where you could sit down alone on the garden’s bench as dried leaves meander into the blow of the Winter’s specter.

The convent’s bell resonated against the slumberous serenity of the dawn whose faint illumination of another day streaked through the curtains of Brother Christopher’s window. The cloister was smeared with lingering shadows in the absence of light, and the righteous man is perplexed under the restraint of the tug-of-war between his dreams and the reality.

He ran a palm across his forehead and onto his chin where he felt the roughness of his unshaved image. The classes had almost confiscated his time of fulfilling the procedures towards the complete sacred life he had longed to live for- let alone his personal endeavors- and through the lazy coordination of his eyes, he could fathom himself rendering exhausted and old lines all over the picture of his fading youth.

29, he muttered his own age, sighing in disbelief of how time moved in a slow pace just to allow him encounter heavy assignments. And although he was too young to run a school, his Vow of Obedience bounded him from declining the enterprise.

He ruminated on Father Gideon’s advice: God has arrayed each of the world’s aspect for a reason, and each moment desires to change someone into who he should be. This has shifted his life into a paradox that concealed the perceptive, truthful purpose of his life, and his days have mainly become a quest of transitioning into someone who compensates who he thinks he really is; let alone he rates the specialty of his day through evaluating whether he had accomplished his goal or not.

When things commenced to be a bewildering mental turmoil, he got to his knees and prepared himself for the early morning mass.

***

“Fall in line, please. Hands on your side and make sure to maintain the silence.” The cold dispersed into a tender ache in Brother Maxwell’s throat as he guided the children to the gymnasium.

His voice was elevated into what he could have overly screamed in an emergency, but the students were deafened by their own cause. Despite the drowning unsettlement of the commodities, Brother Max never ceases to feel the weight of Brother Christopher’s surveillance. The past year was rough with the eagerness to fulfill his elder Brother’s expectations of him, but even with countless trials and promises, he was still infused with the youthful and innocent grace. He tried to straighten his posture and ball his voice into a deep sound, but nothing could ever seem to distinguish him from the young children.

“Good morning, Brother Max,” Maxwell swiveled around to see a stern personality. His companion’s green eyes were pulled down by dark pockets below them he seems to be getting more ragged each day.

“Good morning, Brother Chris,” he replied, although anxiously. “We’re off for a good start, don’t you think?”

Christopher’s gaze was shot towards the clouds that hung low, heaved to the ground by the weight of the heavy rain they convey. “I don’t think so.” He objected.

Brother Max wasn’t so astonished by his Brother’s usual disagreement, but somehow his sympathy would grow into a verbal pursuit to spare Chris from his habitual negativity. “I hope not.”

“How many times have you thought that a day would be without any distractions?”

The younger one cringed, skimming through his personal recollection of the days he thought would be unruffled. One was during a sponsored mass. Although it did commenced perfectly, the day was concluded by Father Gideon being ashamed of the students’ inconsiderable clamor inside the Church. One was a Thursday morning as this; when the rosary dangling about his waist had its beads skittering across the hallway when it coiled with Mary Anne Paige’s colorful bracelet.

“We shouldn’t put the blame on the children.” Brother Max replied.

“I am not considering the children, themselves, as the problem, Brother. It’s their insufficient discipline.”

“They’re young, you should under-“

“And so are you, Brother Max,” Max took this as a criticism. Brother Chris had always been impertinent towards the children’s lacking discipline, and although he opposes Brother Christopher’s opinion, to be aligned with the students seems like a harsh judgment from him.

When the misconception seemed to be evident on Maxwell’s face, Christopher cleared out: “But I don’t say you’re uncontrollable as them. What I mean is that you should serve as an effective icon for these children. You’re youthful as them, but on the brighter side.”

Brother Max stood petrified by his superior’s sentiment, but he was uncertain as to whether he should be rejoiced by the flattery remark he had garnered as he thought it inappropriate to compare. But for Brother Christopher’s fulfillment sake, he chose to agree.

“As you wish, Brother.” Maxwell bobbed.

***

Brother Chris couldn’t do anything better than to visualize the young Brother’s innocence as something that could be perceived as guilty pleasure. Brother Max is undeniably a portrait of an aspect’s opposing fractions- his honesty was proportioned with his being naïve.

Chris knows this is nature’s truth, a part of the Lord’s plan for the boy as the child’s purpose was glistening with the light of his dedication towards it, but seeing the young one suppressing his self shoots him with a pang of guilt. He thought he had always been the cause of it.

It were many times did Brother Chris try to make Max understand that he feels a brotherly love towards him. Christopher could still remember the night years ago when a desperate knock awoken the whole convent and he opened the door into a strong air of distress. It wasn’t the anxious looks on Mr. and Mrs. Seton’s faces that empowered the night with a strange feeling, but it was the sense of abandonment within the glint of Maxwell’s eyes.

There was a pristine condition that was set within the convent’s wall as Max, as young as he is, joined the group of eight people. Brother Christopher would embark on his days with the energy of his fascination towards Brother Max’s growth as a dedicated and spiritual boy. He would watch him eat in serene thanksgiving and pray in silent comprehension.

It was also many times did Chris endeavor to contain himself with Maxwell’s rightfulness, trying to bridge the two of them with brotherly affection, but there were gaps: Christopher’s insensible character and Brother Max’s intimidation towards it. Chris sees him as a blood brother, but his approach was reciprocated by Maxwell’s suppressed reverence.

The children settled into an organized gathering, inducing a satisfying tranquility. Brother Chris casted a calm look on Brother Max’s bothered expression. He thought that if it wasn’t because of the invisible distance between them, he would have never been so self-absorbed.

He rested a palm atop Maxwell’s shoulder and rendered a weary smile. His throat itched with a wistful urge to say something, but he just faced him with a brotherly demeanor and went off to join the rest of the brethren standing in front of the crowd.

***

“St. Therese School Pockettsburg might be allocated in the business of Washington,” Brother Maxwell was standing on the tip of his toes where he struggled to see his superior. Without any reason, listening seems to be better this way- when you could see the speaker- but despite his distinctive status, nothing could stop the other students to be taller than he is.

It is during Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays would the children gather up in the gymnasium. But today’s different. Brother Max knew that Brother Chris usually starts the morning with the review of the school’s rules and regulations, and the older Brother thinks it best to immediately attend to those students that make themselves unaffected by the strict disciplinary action. Responsibility has always been a part of Brother Christopher’s principles.

“Theresians should always be isolated from the growing, Westernized glamour of the world. We should always maintain a humble air of simplicity,” Brother Chris added. “The girls should wear skirts with lengths that should approximately be twelve inches away from the ground.” He exhorted, clutching on a ruler.

Brother Max didn’t squander any moment. He strolled along the lines of attentive students to fulfill the regulatory maintenance. One thing about the new basis of the children’s uniforms is that it makes it easy to distinguish those who are different from the group. When a girl wears a skirt that doesn’t meet the school’s demands, you don’t have to look for it as you could see it in a moment’s time.

Max walked in a graceful pace, hands locked across his back. “Could you do something about this by Monday, Miss Robinsons?” he pointed at the girl’s skirt, trailing down insufficiently to reveal her kneecap.

The girl moved her shoulders in a dance, delineating a taunting grin. “Tempted, Brother Max?”

Her words drew a range of attention towards them. Max could feel other students nudging at the girl, and he was taken aback by the remark he almost knocked Vincent Haze from his equanimity.

Maxwell knows himself to be certain that never would there be a time he would let himself be dragged into an obscuring phase by temptation. He distracts himself with saintly leisure to be heedless of sinful provocations. But despite his faithful confidence of justifying the purity he beholds, nothing could ever seem to fill the blank mind he exhibits on certain occasion as this. He couldn’t change the girl’s mind to save himself if that is what she strongly believes.

“Beg your pardon, Miss Lacey?” he just excused.

The girl snickered. “Come now, Brother, I’m sure you’re having that-“

“Just who do you think you’re taking to, Lacey?” an old voice that came from behind intercepted. In his late 50s, the man is worth someone’s desire for advices. His hair was pale as lime- a brisk hue that remains compatible with his lively nature. He could prove that age doesn’t indicate someone’s chances to feel alive. His smile emits a warm, youthful soul that connects with Brother Maxwell’s.

“Father Gideon.” Brother Max expressed.

The priest casted his jolly gaze on the young Brother. “Good morning, Brother Maxwell,” he greeted, his beam incrementally pursing into a stern impression as he turned back towards Lacey Robinsons. “I’ll have you spend a night in the crypt if you won’t stop questioning the Brothers’ virtuousness.”

The girl jerked back at the warning. She cowered. “I’m sorry, Father Gideon. Brother Maxwell.” She said.

Brother Max was able to mask the bemused expression that marked his face with a genuine nod of satisfaction and forgiveness, but the priest’s air remained frozen in the midst of disgust and dissatisfaction.

“Today is Thursday,” Brother Chris recommenced. “And so far, no one has been sent to my office. But I do hope no one has brought any gadgets with them today. I have been quite reasonable to confiscate them because they distract you from being academically focused.” He reminded.

At the crowd, the children shared suspicious looks of scrutiny on each other, trying to drag themselves into an informational depth of this issue. “I hope that’s all clear for you.” The Brother-in-charge added.

“Yes, Brother Chris.” The children affirmed before they could be dismissed into assorted classes.

***

“What do you call this haircut, again, Mr. Harrington?” Brother Chris rubbed an exhausted palm across his creased forehead. Jaime Harrington was the fifth student that he had cautioned this day, and as he gazed out of the window, he was glad that the sun could almost succumb into the dusk.

“A Mohawk, Brother Chris.” The boy was reluctant when he said it. He was fumbling with his sweaty fingers.

“A Mohawk,” the Brother echoed. “When I say ‘having and observing an air of simplicity, Jaime, I also meant not having a complicated hairstyle.”

“Yes, Brother Chris.”

The principal took out a pair of scissors from the drawer, revealing it to the boy with a teasing grin. “Brother Matthew is the convent’s barber,” he started. “And I have to admit that I became one of his worst students when he first joined us. I’m not Sweeney Todd the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, child, and I’ll try my best on you.”

Chris had the cutting tool raised in the air; his fingers were looped around the handle as he maneuvered behind the boy in a taunting rate. Jaime Harrington flinched as he felt the tips of his hair be caressed by the cold edge of the blades. The Brother peered down with a wistful smirk; his hand itched to trim the fidgety boy’s hair.

“Someone’s here to see you, Brother Chris.” The door opened with a diverting creak, causing the principal to twitch with every expectations betrayed by Brother Matthew who stood clutching on the doorknob, unaware of the ongoing business within the office.

“What have I told you about carrying to knock, Brother Matt?” the head Brother lowered his scissors, sighing in exasperation as he swiveled to face Brother Matthew who loomed over the door’s frame.

“I’m very sorry, Brother.”

Brother Chris snorted. “Just take this lucky student with you, then,” he ordered. “And give him a haircut.”

Brother Matthew, who was fairly two years older than he is, cared for a smiling bob as the lead Brother passed by grumpily.

The stirring cold churning about the air was never fluctuated since last night’s storm, and the leaves that were left meandering against the breeze rustled at every subtle motion. Brother Chris spotted the visitor who promptly got to his feet and removed his hat in his presence. The man was muffled in a leather coat, his eyeglasses falling wearily on his nose bridge. The Brother could only recognize him as a controversial image, often televised for scandalous reasons.

Brother Christopher never expected someone of his status to come and pay a visit the most passive occupants of Pockettsburg, Washington; let alone the little chance his congregation provides for visitors.

When the Brother greeted, a taint of surprise cascaded along his words. “Senator Wilmut,” despite seeming to never be able to obtain a tone of casualness, his voice sounded warm and welcoming, disregarding the tension that builds up in his chest. “I’m very sorry you weren’t welcomed in. Brother Matthew is a stranger. He’s from Italy and never really familiar with such prominent fig-“

“No,” Wilmut intercepted. Brother Chris halted, his arm raised for a shake as he faced Gordon Wilmut. Beneath the veneer of graded glass right before the Senator’s green eyes, the Brother could notice the look of anxiety. When the official discerned of how unscrupulous he sounded, he said: “What I mean is that I may not be what your premises would welcome with such warmth.”

“Excuse me, Senator?” Brother Chris was bothered by Senator Wilmut’s weary smile. The government official seems to be avoiding the Brother’s gaze, looking far up ahead.

When the Senator swallowed, there seems to be a lump in his throat.

He stood inarticulate, heavily petrified with the emotion that shackles his feet to the ground. When Brother Christopher’s patience had been worn out to a thin thread, he followed the middle-aged man’s gaze and saw that he was staring at the cross atop the Church.

By the way the Senator seem to cower at the sight of the distant image, Brother Chris poses with confidence as he was certain that guilt profoundly subdues Wilmut. As the older man was hushed, Chris ruminated on the words of the reporters covering several protests that were ignited by the revelation of the government’s inconsiderable activities.

Prior to the citizens’ violent pursuit of justice, President Ferguson’s circle of leading officials was compelled to be divided. Some of his colleagues turned against him as they introduced to the society’s fair judgment the President’s corruptive endeavors. He had been reaping the country’s taxes and had leaded some other officials to accompany him with enjoying his intakes.

As the tension towered between two sides that strive to eliminate each other down, convolutions of other issues which had somehow driven to invade the private lives of the officials also brewed. But Brother Chris thought it ironic how both opposing sides frustrated the pursuance of justice.

If the obvious is to be stated, Ferguson and his followers are certainly indulged in corruption, but the better group had served only themselves and never the quest for any political stability. Some disputing officials only exclude those who admitted to be of guilt only because they wanted to place themselves on higher positions. Senator Wharton was very particular about Senator Stone because she was the toughest competitor he could ever have on the next presidential election.

In the midst of the surprising progress of inconsiderate allegations and disclosures, it is hard for the government personnel to remain neutral, but Senator Gordon Wilmut had somehow been incomprehensible; his negations towards the queries of questioning people were easily accepted and abandoned. The same goes to Senator Hadrian Painswick, though he is currently articulate in organizing campaigns to phase out President James.

“I’ve grown separated from my own religion in years.” Brother Chris thought it too long a pause for a completely capable man to reply. Wilmut, though manifesting a set of thoughtful outlines, seems to be too anxious to be engaging on such intimate meeting.

“Well,” the religious exclaimed. “We’ll be happy to welcome you in. Besides, and if this assures you, this is a convent, not the Church. We’ll have some tea.”

“You came here with an important reason, I could guess.” Brother Christopher sat with a sigh, respiring on the scent of his tea as he clutched on his cup whereas Senator Wilmut sat stiffly on the parallel seat. His palms were rested rigidly atop his thighs, casting a low gaze on the hot beverage placed over the low glass table he’s facing.

They were on the convent’s sitting room; somewhere the Brothers could usher in visitors. The space’s character allures the eyes in some impressive ways: the set of furniture is of certain quality and the fireplace proved compatible with the golden lights around to induce comforting warmth.

“Yes.” The Senator reluctantly confirmed.

Linking his guilty utterances with the kind of crime the Brother has suspected Wilmut had been involved with; a bitter taste had risen onto his throat. But instead of gagging from the vile taste, Brother Chris became the bitterness himself.

He asked: “Would you mind confiding it to me? If it’s necessary?” then took a generous sip from his drink.

Senator Wilmut awkwardly shifted on his seat. A couple of times would have his amusing glance become studious of the room’s features. “I could see just how lucky your congregation is to be accommodated in a place of such innocence, Brother.”

Christopher thought this nonsensical. His voice started to resonate with hostility. “It’s a choice, Senator.”

“Excuse me, Brother?”

Brother Chris smirked. “We choose our own paths towards certain point of this world. That’s why you don’t blame yourself if you be thrown at the bottom of the heap.”

“Tell that to those homeless people who blame the government they did drugs and all.”

Wilmut let out a faint, almost compelled sort of laugh. And when he seems to be inviting the Brother to buy his inappropriate kind of humor, Chris let his surprise of hearing an insensitive remark from the Senator be superseded by the truth that the official was just saying a joke.

A color flurried across the Senator’s face when he took heed of the Brother’s displeasure towards his sentiments. Brother Chris could see his expressions settle in a shameful manner as he tightened his jaw. His public image had somehow been distorted by several scandals and the complexity these had leaded into altered his entire days into depressing moments of reputational destruction. He had disclosed that he lost his family, and that his wealth renders him almost hollow. It is because his life is without any genuine happiness. He was permitted to reside within the White House alongside the President that never exempted him from the government’s manipulation. His feeble disposition exposed him as a defenseless target- disregarded by those of the justice-seeking side, and a puppet for the tax-farmers. But he was raised of noble growth and whether he has garnered a percentage of the government’s stolen money, Brother Chris is uncertain. The Brother thought that maybe it’s just a matter of questioning one’s self whether the Senator deserves a flustering life or not.

Wilmut cleared his throat once again, the enlightening color of humor fading from his face. “I agree with your philosophy, Brother. ‘Wisdom is the sugar for a sweet life’,” he said. “And if I’m right about what I think you’re trying to point out, yes, I do put myself accountable for this terrible living of mine.”

“That pleases me to hear from you.”

“But I came here for a revitalizing purpose.”

A quirk of confusion made Brother Christopher’s eyebrows jump. When he had analyzed the Senator’s prospect, he lowered his tensed shoulders. “I’m sorry, Senator, but our Order would have bound us to ignore political negotiations and-“

“This shouldn’t persuade you to be pulled into a particular involvement,” the man insisted. “Agreeing to be in that label has been the biggest mistake of my life, I have to admit, Brother, and I don’t want to let that happen to you of my own cause.”

The Brother pursed his lips. He doesn’t have the credibility to indicate, but he could see through the peculiarity of Senator Gordon’s aspects that his thoughts were reserved for a heavy containment- manipulation, of course.

“So the corrupt government is trying to save itself,” Brother Chris knows there are certain virtues to be considered as what his status asks. But then that would restrict him from going against someone with blood on his hands. Chris startled Wilmut. “It’s just that it’s taking on a new step. Deception.”

Bewilderment became evident on the Senator’s face. “You have misunderstood me, Brother.”

The cup clink as the Brother impatiently set his drink aside. “Whatever it is that you might offer, Senator Wilmut, me and my Brothers have no interest on it. I know you’re someone, Senator.”

The politician took a deep breath. Christopher intuited that the Senator had been insulted and is now enraged, but although he never seems to betray the Brother’s opinions, he just sat frozen until his stillness was disheveled by the school’s bell.

“I have further appointments and a limited time to defend myself from your suspicions, Brother-“

“Brother Christopher.”

“Brother Christopher.” The Senator echoed. “I would like you to be informed that our country would be under a martial law at any point.”

“For what reasons, Senator?” affronting Gordon Wilmut’s honorable status never made Brother Christopher weary of the threats that the official could give him, but weathering imminent disturbances had struck him with a quiver.

“Crimes have been statistically inclining since the issues regarding President Fergu-“

“And you’re afraid to be the disturbance’s cause?”

“No.” the Senator’s voice had escalated a little loudly, but Brother Chris suppressed an impassive look from himself. “I’m sorry, Brother Chris, but just like you the society has been brainwashed by the speculations they have propounded. This disturbed the flow of our country’s performance and this ignorance disputes an economical progress.”

“So you’re telling me we should let you harvest the people’s money? Do you even know how much this will have to put us down?”

“I’m not hearing any of your allegations anymore, Brother,” the Senator insisted, genuinely sounding resigned. “I’m warning you. There will be a series of regulations, Brother Chris, fatal raids and tortures would be in anybody’s way when one will be suspected as part of the opposition- with or without conclusive evidence. I don’t know how the President has come up with this, but he thinks that the country would be in a plunge if the people’s moral would stay drowned. He considers this whole thing as a ship. One hole, even the smallest one, should be covered up.”

“That would be the ugliest, most inconsiderable sin even God would find hard to forgive.” The man in the black robe arrived to his footing, exasperated of the looming disgust his visitor brought to him.

“Stop acting like you’re not a big sinner, Brother- falsely accusing someone. I would never expect that from someone like you.”

Christopher snorted. “Everybody makes mistakes. It’s just that some of us make a pile more than that of the others,” he said. “Senator Wilmut, we may not have a friendly history for me to confidently conclude, but you’re a pity to be under someone’s decisions. Adds to that is that you’re foolish enough to let your words betray the truth your mind knows of.”

Wilmut, instead of being staggered aback by the harsh statement, just delineated a grin. “I know the truth as of now,” he said. “And your deviation from this wrath will be the most generous provision our government could offer. I personally see it as an arrear, Brother Chris, I just hope your mind’s on the right path of thinking to know what the most fitting payment is.”

Deception – Chapter Two – Eyes Glint

The school’s bell was hushed from the morning’s business, and the sound of footsteps reverberated along the corridor where Brother Christopher sauntered as gently as he could, his hands leveled on his abdomen where they folded.

He halted by the door of the deserted 9-St. Therese room and knocked. “Good morning, Brother Jordan, have you seen Brother Maxwell lately?”

“10- St. Paul,” Brother Jordan Gabe answered. The ginger, as many would call him. “Just as where you expect him to be.”

Through the green eyes of the younger Brother was the glint of enthusiasm. Another fact is that if one person seems to know Brother Max’s current location by instinct, it would be his closest peer.

Brother Jordan Gabe hails from Ireland as most of the Americans are now. But despite the extensive range of his knowledge, he never really paid interest on rediscovering his ancestry. He was 19 when he joined the Gabrielites. The Brethren were convinced that Gabe Bayley is fine a young man to seclude himself from the rest of the world, but then the Archbishop thought it best for the Brothers to be academically functional and charitable. This desperate call synched with Jordan Gabe’s Discernment of which he displayed such humble cleverness and eloquence. He was then allowed to be a prospective member of the convent, though he attended classes to be able to teach Science and Mathematics as his Brethren thought it best for him. The process of his becoming was impressively accelerated. After a year of his being postulant, he became a willing novice. And after his two years of novitiate, he took his Vows. It would then be another year until a new Brother came.

“Have a great day, Brother.” Brother Chris beamed, and then took the stairs with the slightest of impatience.

The door to the 10-St.Paul classroom was opened in a narrow crevice. The daylight that passes through the room’s windows reflected on the smooth, glistening floor of the hallway- flawless enough to project shapes of leaves from the trees outside.

A shadow ruffled the stillness of the light, a silhouette of graceful motion assured Brother Christopher. It pierces him to break his own rules, so he clutched on the door knob and landed a finger against the wood. He knocked.

“Brother Maxwell?” he called out, leaning against the door that creaked as it yielded to his weight.

A loud squeak sent the birds perched by the window fluttering, Brother Chris could hear, like a heavy table being dragged against a restricting friction, preceded by the rustle of a sudden movement.

“Brother Christopher?” a voice asked, reluctant.

“May I come in?”

Brother Christopher snatched a sight of Brother Maxwell by the margin of the door’s frame. The younger Brother’s image was obliterated by the contrast of light. He was standing by the window, bathed in a dull light as his outline glinted with silver, the rest of his body in obscurity.

“You know you shouldn’t have waited for my permission.” Brother Max said through a small breach of his lips as a grin cracked on his face.

Chris lifted a palm. “’Put your money where your mouth is’, they say, Brother Max,” he poised himself where Max stood with anxiety, expecting any response from Maxwell whilst maintaining an impassive expression. “Anyway, I’ve requested for this meeting as a mean of private discussion.” He marched towards the window.

Brother Max whipped his head to face him, dishevelment evident about his face. Christopher couldn’t help but be distracted and interrogative about his goals as of now. Would it be worth alarming the fragile Brother with what could turn out to be as nonsense? But with a fistful of hesitation that seems to have been ditched, Maxwell accompanied him by the beautiful depiction of a gloomy day nonetheless. Together, they rested their foreheads against the pane and peered through the foggy glass.

“Say it.” Brother Christopher’s words came to Brother Max like nails scraped against a chalkboard. The sharpness sounded as startling as the way how Chris had spoken after a dreadfully long silence.

“Excuse me, Brother? But Brother Chris doesn’t seem to pay him much attention, it was odd, he thought.

“That thing you have in mind,” the older Brother cleared out. “Say it.” His lips were puckered peculiarly he was almost snarling.

They younger one’s chest began to throb. Facing him, he thought, is a shallow block, but within the thick closure is a man calling out- encouraging Brother Max to vocalize his youthful sentiments of which he degrades as insignificant. Maxwell pondered perhaps Christopher has mistaken, or that his ever-bemused expression of youthful innocence has been misunderstood as appearing to have metal reservations. But seeing his Brother’s now impatient gaze sent him skimming through any ideas.

“May I ask what the discussion would be about?” he asked.

Brother Chris sighed, his chest deflating as if he was relieved to have Max snap out of the hysteria he was about to go through. “I might need to honest answers, Brother Max,” the younger one swallowed. Agitation is evident about his face. And though it hurts him to see Maxwell’s walls being left to collapse he knows he was causing this, and that nothing could cease him from doing so. “I’ll ask for some of your insights as well.”

Max was appalled. Shock came as a glint of sweat smeared across his forehead. “I don’t think I would fit the mold of your request, Brother-“

“You’re young, Brother. You’re far from certain experiences that would cloud your judgment.” Brother Chris smiled at his being logical.

“But-“

“Classes have been suspended for inconsiderable reasons,” Christopher maneuvered towards one of the armchairs where he sat examining a scratch against the wood. “Who knows how many people have been killed from last night’s raids.”

“Last night raids? I-“

“Exactly,” Brother Chris waved his Brother to silence. He let out a faint laugh. “But first things first and we’ll get by that later on.”

Maxwell’s silhouette loomed from where Brother Christopher sat; the gray daylight a contrasting background. Chris fathomed a day when the younger Brother would finally earn this repute: someone composed with reserved but interesting insights. Brother Max is a youthful icon who could fight his way against the tide of intimidating wisdom. But as he squinted through the dark mantle that obscures Brother Maxwell, Christopher could make out his actual features: his calm and ever-concerned face, and the grace that accompanies his careful movement. He acts as if air, itself, is made of fragile glass.

“Have you any endeavors of lending your wisdom to help the school with the children’s sufficiency?” Chris was sure the younger one would be sensitive a recipient for his query. He could see his shoulders quirk against the pressure.

“If ever need on the task yes, of course, why would I decline?” Brother Maxwell’s voice wavered. Chris was pleased at the sound of obedience.

“It’s a good thing to know that I have someone in the roster,” But Brother Chris knows this conversation wouldn’t lead him somewhere he attempts to be in, but he thought it being a good start. “But you should know we’re not here to discuss about any promotion.” He admitted, watching in regret the way the flush of joy faded from Max’s cheeks. “You’re too young to be validated for the job, Brother, you should know that.”

The oddity that churned with the serene air that followed prompted Brother Christopher that it’s about time he should vaguely bring up what he fundamentally came here for. “Do take a seat.” This might take some of your time, he wanted to say, but he’d pondered this would only establish a greater deal of tension to Max. Instead, he entrapped the prickling words back and observed as his Brother take the seat adjacent to him in a whoosh of a black robe.

“A lot has been steering the world onto abrupt changes and it might be until we have finally changed ourselves that we would come to realize that we are changing,” Christopher noticed himself peering through the distant window. He thought of how Senator Wilmut had come to invite the congregation to their side, and although the decision came from Brother Chris alone, he thought he had spoken on behalf of the disgusted public as well. The government has run out of loops to fabricate their unveiled crimes, and now they are relying to make a façade over themselves. Deception, Brother Chris ruminated ceaselessly. “And with that, do you ever think there’d be any spot of survival for those who refuse to change?”

Chris could see Maxwell’s eyebrows furrow. But his pleasure was overwhelming as he noticed the bemusement subsiding from his Brother’s expressions in a quick span. “I don’t think it would kill to refuse,” Brother Maxwell’s voice tottered with his dubious chuckle. “Nor would it be easy, I guess.”

Brother Christopher slumped back against his chair. He was amused. He thought the times his ideas were compensated with a rather opposing view were countable, and right now, he was actually settling Brother Max in a casual discussion. “But what if these changes go against your standards?”

Maxwell’s eyes pottered across the room until they locked thoughtfully with Brother Christopher’s. “I’d prefer some references.”

“The students.”

“The students?”

“Do you see the subject matter as rather uncomfortable?” Max sat still speechless, as far as Chris observed, and he glared in victory as he had guided the younger Brother with the construction of inner strength. But bile rose from his stomach as a though dispersed his focus into dishevelment. Is he really to profit from this manipulation? Would he be grateful of the days ahead of this young man which are to be spent in values he had not naturally infused himself with? But he devoted these prospects to the saying: to see is to believe. And there’s nothing to see yet. Not just yet.

“On certain scopes considering it, yes, I do find it a discussion of such unease.” Brother Max disclosed.

“And why would that be?”

“Because as much as there are remarks about the students, there are these that are too harsh to be contemplated upon.”

Students, the small voice inside Brother Christopher’s mind echoes. He wondered if it ever came to Brother Max as inducing a great deal of peculiarity to say children yet he is one; like the awkwardness one might endure upon calling out for his namesake.

Brother Chris stretched out; feeling the satisfaction it had him filled up with to hear the crunches of his joints. Maxwell had always been so pale he never seem to have let a ray of sunlight caress his skin, but as the colors touch his cheeks, he did seem to glow radiantly. He thought the younger Brother as somewhat an IQ test- unpredictably challenging.

“Technology,” Chris started. “My dear technology. He had bribed the children’s mind with its useless prominence, am I right?”

“But we rely on every little thing it provides,” Max argued, though the tone was seemingly restricted and condensed. “It had been part of how the world change and will be for as long as the Earth turns.”

Brother Chris felt the friendly atmosphere between them dissipate. His heart began to throb irrationally in a rapid pace. “My concerns serve as a partition between the students and those who hinder their potentials to be productive.”

“But our eyes shouldn’t glint on other people’s mishaps.”

“Meaning?”

Brother Maxwell sucked in a breath of warm air from inside the room. He glared low at his hands that were carefully folded atop his lap. Whether he did this as a sort of brace for what he’s about to say or a subtle sign of annoyance, Brother Chris doesn’t know.

“Are you really bothered with the students?”

“Christopher was astonished. He never really questioned his own purposes for his actions, but now is something he was too intrigued to ask about: does everybody really mistrust him as this?

When he spoke, it were a short answer, frustrating the amount of time it cost him to formulate the reply. “Why, yes,” he deceived the ceaseless pestering of what he had just heard with a smile. “Why on Earth would you doubt my efforts towards charity?”

The other Brother casted a low yet soft expression, the one that might depict someone’s sympathy. “Because all I could ever see is the way you yearn to prove yourself right. You just use the affairs considering the children as a reason to pursue your self-indulging steps towards your own pleasure. You take prey on people’s mistakes, Brother, and that isn’t something we should do.“

Brother Chris had found this provocative, and it wasn’t too long before Maxwell’s sentiments unraveled a surge of heat that cupped his cheeks. But against the offense, he kept his temper at bay. He smiled. Turns out Maxwell’s straightforwardness submerged Christopher’s overflowing temperament. Accompanied with his gift of mature decisiveness, he could prevent dark minds from prevailing over him. Knowing that his goals were never betrayed by the conclusion of this meeting, Brother Chris is convinced that Max satisfies what he wants for him.

He decided to finally arrive to his point. “Brother Max,” he began, running a rough palm across his face to let the slumber of the morning reside, though the gesture seemed to have made it worse. “My concern for the children is nothing but genuine, and yes, it does sound like I feed myself with personal pleasures. But then, there isn’t something really wrong about standing satisfied at the background while seeing your hatchlings fly the good path, is it?”

Brother Maxwell just nodded, though it’s vague whether his judgment of Brother Christopher’s values was veered into a good impression. “I still think otherwise, I’m sorry, Brother,” but he still projected the thoughtful gaze he shoots, Brother Chris observed. If it’s a huge deal of reluctance that’s behind his floundering voice, he did great in masking it off. “But I’ll try. I’ll ruminate on it.”

“Why?”

“Brother?”

Christopher decided to drain the simmering exasperation with a deep breath. His cheeks had been too burnt with restricted rage. He is high-strung, he admits, but never had his patience been abused as this. “I’m telling the truth and yet you don’t believe me. You think Father Gideon didn’t tell me when that girl taunted you with an accusation of taking interest on her?” he could notice the way Maxwell cringed. “But then you’re certain that you chastise yourself from that sort of temptation.”

Brother Maxwell’s mouth gaped in a small breach. If he ever was in a petrifying incredulity, nothing could define it other than the rosy glow glowing about his face. The younger one inclined his head, seemingly struck by Christopher’s point who grinned in glory.

“I will try, Brother Chris.” Frustration flurries inside the older Brother and he could feel it being ignited into a wildfire through the tingle on his fingertips. Brother Chris pushed his back hard against the chair, making sure his patience wouldn’t be completely shriveled as he extricated the stress at every pressure on his body. He wished he could have a stress ball.

There was a reason to hold back his defenses: after all, this meeting was not set to encompassing Brother Max to be convinced with his concerns about the students, it’s about assessing the Maxwell’s personality and potentials of being wise against what anxieties are imminent.

“I pity you for believing what isn’t true, Brother,” Chris said, exerting superfluous effort, somehow, to bind himself from sounding too sarcastic especially now that he delineated a grin of fulfillment. “Although I have a disclosure to make, and that is I have been deceitful towards you in the span of our discussion.” Each word was noted like thorns cut off from a rose so that the hold of it wouldn’t demand a cost of piercing pain and blood. He knew it would make him feel cleansed if he accused himself.

Brother Max froze checking the windowpane. He ran a finger across the space and checks it for dust and the peculiar angle of his twisted face represents the count of bewilderment he feels. He looks so much better this way, Brother Christopher regarded; with the play of shadow and light occurring against the surface of his face. The cleft on his chin becomes more prominent, and his slightly flat nose made him appear younger than he is right now, though the beads of growing pimples remark the way he’s maturing.

“Testing me?” Max gave off a faint laugh of disbelief. “I don’t see any reasons for that to be necessary-“

“This country is blemished with sinful stains, Brother Max,” Chris rose to his feet, leaning forward as he stretched his arms to clasp on the back of the chair in front of him. He knew it was a bad decision to allow his voice to escalate into an impatient tone, and now he cowers in regret as he felt the radiance of anger being distributed on each of his nerves. “And it wouldn’t be long before we tear ourselves into strips, and you know what can accelerate our trip towards that fate? The government.”

“I don’t think-“

“We’re going to be under the bounds of a martial law, Brother,” Brother Christopher continued. His concerns of the country’s prospects after being dominated by a militarized government projected imaginative pictures depicting all the possible turmoil in his mind. These clouded his carefulness. “President James Ferguson and the rest of his party regard the countrymen as making up the United States of America. This is how they came up with an assumption that this country is being self-destructive, and to resolve this issue, they signed on a rather harsh way of predominant discipline. And do you want to know what the truth is? It’s the fact that the government used this implementation to obliterate the flaws of their system- the corruption- and to prevent people from protesting thus to keep their positions in place. And if they will have to keep up with this, they will keep on channeling the people’s money to their vacation houses and private jets.”

“And do we have a role on this part?”

“I personally think that as of now we really do, especially when they attempted to layer their dirt with a clean sheet, Brother, but the veneer was far too thin for some people to notice, me being part of that group.”

“You can’t be sure-“

“Senator Wilmut visited to inform me of their group’s endeavors. Can’t you see? They’re pulling us to their side so they could paint a fine picture over themselves. With this, they could ensure the citizens with their made-up reliability. They threatened me with their power, but against all the dangers it will have to put us I insisted. We can’t have the danger be drawn towards us so maybe it’s time to unshackle your decisions with the narrowness of your mind, Brother. For now, we’re the wolves that they strive to tame to fend the protests off of themselves, and I don’t like to be in a leash- or at least not unless I feel safe with it.”

The infuriation had hazed Brother Christopher’s control of himself. He had permitted this to overwhelm him against his full awareness of how insensitive and abrasive he sounded, and what made it worse is that he comprehended it in such a broad time scale, and now the searing of his lips and throat warns him of how loud he spoke; how it could have been too much for Brother Maxwell’s vulnerability.

But then the younger Brother appears unaffected and unmoved. This time, Brother Chris encouraged himself to be on a soothing transition. Brother Max regarded this with a considerate gaze.

Max perched himself on a chair. “It still doesn’t answer the question I ask of you, Brother.” He asked.

At this, Christopher’s shoulders dropped to an ease as felt his own smile, the word headstrong on his mind. “Is it funny how in the end of the convolution our meeting has lead into, all I wanted to know is how well you work with deception?”

Suddenly, Brother Chris was transported back to how the room actually feels like. As gently as he could, he embraced the warmth that seems to stir along the atmosphere of the place. He noticed the birds dwelling by the branches touching the glass of the windows. Then he rested his sight on Brother Maxwell’s seated image. Chris rendered a beam.

Brother Max returned the smile. “So how was I?”

Brother Christopher was appalled. Surely, Brother Maxwell’s openness towards his plan is beyond what he expects of this meeting. This got him concluding: Brother Max, as it turned out to be, is persistent on his own beliefs just as long as he knows it’s a step towards goodness. Max is certain, though this isn’t remarked by arrogance but rather the emphasis of this personality is hindered by his humble air.

But Christopher snatched himself back to the fact that he had plotted this discussion, and right now he perceives Maxwell’s presence as a personal request for his pleasure, and he knows for himself that he is not as selfish as this. Besides, he doesn’t feed on the satisfaction of having his Brother choose the right side- arriving on this decision is an obligation Max had fulfilled. This inference settled Chris in an enclosing circle of certainty that he doesn’t want to manipulate Brother Max to be a weapon. Of course not, he assured himself.

Chris let his hands trail down his sides as he poised himself in a relaxed stance. “You’re stubborn enough, Brother.” He had never smiled so many times in the midst of this all.

Deception – Chapter Three – Puppies Bite

Brother Christopher Stein reads on his leisure. Of course, he would be plunged into a stressful phase of his hobby if the classes weren’t suspended; he would let his eyes skim an excuse letter from an injured student instead of a newspaper in a cold morning.

He spread the fragile sheet of newspaper across his face, leaning his arms against the margin of his aged mahogany desk. Logbooks and records were piled into a tower around him. All around, stuck hanging on the wall, were portraits of Jesus and Mary and different Saints who convey unique stories of devotion that are incessant on keeping Chris inspired.

Unlike his chamber, his office was built with a fireplace, but it’s deprived of any worth especially now that the Brother, himself, observes a discipline to be a man of his own words and vows. A stack of firewood is mounted instead of the crackling flame. And on the mantel, at the end of a line of a variety of books, was the image of Saint Therese of the Child Jesus.

Brother Maxwell gave that picture to him as a gift two years ago. The younger Brother knew well just how pressuring Christopher’s responsibility is, administrating the whole school until he would grow detached from the youth he still manifested. And so as to prompt him, he kept it- to remind him that his days are quite short to be stressing about fulfilling his tasks.

But as numerous days were partly spent reflecting on the story extricated from the background of the picture, he thought it ironic- how people say life is too short to be sitting around worrying about stuffs but then advice that you will have an extensive time solving your problems.

Despite its personal purpose, the portrait of Saint Therese reminded him not of himself, but Brother Max who serves as a novice as of now. He knew the becoming of the younger Brother into a Holy Servant would be pursued in an unruffled stream. And as he performs further procedures does he exhibit just how passionate he is to make it with ease.

He clutched on his coffee as he read from the rim of the cup the headline: Ferguson Continues Fight against Disputes.

Brother Christopher endured the tension on his enkindled cheeks as he rendered a grin. President James Ferguson presides as the leader of the United States of America. It’s been his third term. And although the first moments of his rule have propounded beneficial gestures and have been favorable towards people’s reception, it was clear since the last few months why the government had been inactive- despite the hike of taxes. And now Ferguson and his team ignited protests that dispersed conflicts of wide impact to the country; schools were suspended for example.

Chris could only lock a disdainful gaze at Senator Gordon Wilmut during his visit two days ago. He was wise to believe that he seem to burn at the sight of the Cross- he was a man with a heap of sin mounted atop his shoulders being involved in the circle of the President’s corrupt fraternity- and now he appeared to be not worthy of any humane forgiveness to leash the Church with them just so that they could deceive the sinful stain on their suits into a veneer of being merged into a good and innocent side.

Brother Chris had consulted a youthful mind yesterday. Brother Maxwell is an empty cup. He needed to be filled with something to believe in, and so Christopher had done the gesticulation he thought was best. He found it easy, although he was certain just by being able to attest Maxwell’s wisdom that he could’ve never used a long political conversation to advice him which side to choose.

And also, Christopher wasn’t appalled by the Senator’s threats. Even without any warnings, reports of missing persons could come to him as conclusive enough to enclose the cases with a certainty that the Ferguson Team exterminates those who try to unravel their patches of flaws.

And now we’re in danger. He discerned. He was vocal about his opposition against Wilmut and the political group of his loyalty. And now Brother Chris could perceive that he is arriving to the instance where he is almost paranoid as he had jeopardized his brethren. He could sense it as if the danger imminent is the coppery stench stirring along every blow of frigid breeze.

But this wouldn’t be long. He assured himself. Soon, the clear evidences of Ferguson’s corruption would be enough to provoke the people’s power to reach its highest toll. And as the presidential elections inch towards its deadline, Senator Hadrian Painswick’s appealing campaigns would make it much easier to cease the turmoil encouraged by the current disputed government. President James Ferguson’s endeavors would be ceased hopeless as his fourth term comes as a haze.

There was a knock on the door. He laid the neatly folded newspaper on the table.

Brother Christopher set his cup aside with a satisfying clink and got to his feet. But as he occupied himself with smoothing down the creases running across his black habit that the door half-opened with a haunting creak and Brother Aloysius’ face appeared by the fringe of the wood, his dark hair streaked with gray strands.

Brother Aloysius Possenti smiled dubiously, but Christopher nodded his welcome to any tasks within his capabilities. “Someone’s here to see you, Brother Chris.” He announced, his accent prompted Chris of olive gardens and pastas. “Not actually someone. They’re a married couple.”

A cold sensation ran down Brother Chris’ spine. Not again. He thought for himself. There was a pressure establishing on his chest that suppresses his lungs not of the air he needs. This one devitalizes him from respiring. At this, he cringed.

Against the fact that he has balled his hands into pale fists to brace himself, he rendered a grin, although he was certain that Brother Aloysius could take heed of the constant shake of his cheeks. “I hope this wouldn’t be any situation as that of Brother Maxwell’s.”

“This time wouldn’t bother Father Gideon, Brother. Or the Bishop. And the Pope doesn’t have to decide for this,” Brother Aloysius’ dark eyes glinted with sudden discernment as if Christopher had provoked his memories to churn and recollect a very familiar occurrence. “Though I doubt this one would be much different,” He explained with a shock of reluctance. “But this would be a different kind of challenge, Brother.”

Brother Christopher knew all along that he wouldn’t be sure whether something that illuminated has flickered its last glow. He is sure that as long as time passes, possibilities are infinite, and now he has to overcome his anxiety of encountering another episode of an intimate happening.

With a brume of reluctance clouding his mind, he made himself permissive to accept the visitors with a hysterically pulsating chest. Brother Aloysius had disappeared, superseded by the presence of a pestered couple.

The coat of the man, presumably the husband, hangs on his arm that he hovers to level his waist. The gleam of blue reflected from his wide eyes appealed Brother Christopher’s attention, but his intuition that the gentleman is young was opposed by the fact that his tousled black hair was streaked with dashes of gray, and he looked like he was made to wear a dark business suit.

His wife was clutched on his free hold. Her face was less crammed by the stress her husband exhibits. She appears to be upright: her auburn hair was tightly fixed in a bun, her cheeks inflamed with a faint rosy color, and her green eyes casted a calmer gaze, assisted with the friendly curve of her flushed lips.

“Good morning,” Brother Christopher was startled by how his voice started off gently- warm. He marched towards the door where the couple stood, taking their hands for an intimate shake. “Please, do come in.” he gestured towards a pair of chairs by his table. As the visitors inched towards the seats did he close the door behind him with a satisfying click.

“I’m really sorry it’s freezing in here,” Brother Christ trod towards his table where the couple sat with arms folded atop their laps. He gathered the folders that lay disarrayed on the wooden surface and deposited them in the steel cabinets allocated at one corner of the room. “There shouldn’t be any fireplace in here. Taking a step back from luxury is all part of the vow.”

He resigned himself from the cleaning sessions and took his seat, slumping back with a relieved sigh whilst facing the beaming guests. “Thank the Heavens for giving us this cloak.” He said to keep them diverted. “Brother Aloysius called that you request for a time with me?”

There was a long pause of awkward silence, but then the husband took heed of his gaped mouth and started speaking out: “My name is Jacob Dayton. This is my wife Lauren.”

The couple’s personality made use of a transition to settle in a calm and gentle demeanor, and as Brother Chris perceived that the moment they demand wouldn’t be worth his hostility and strong headedness was he inflicted with the same air.

“We had come to seek for your assistance in dealing with our problem.” The wife, Lauren, added.

Christopher leaned forward and clasped his hands together into a firm fold to deceive the pressure building within his throbbing chest. By the time the words flurried out of Mrs. Dayton’s mouth, it was as if he was reminiscing with an experience undistinguished from this. “And what is this that bothers you, if I may ask?”

Lauren Dayton’s stare skimmed the interior of the room, dwelling on the scrutiny of Brother Chris’ eyes for a brief moment until it settled on the reassuring warmth of her husband’s dark gaze. With a nod, she seemed to have given the privilege of explaining to her husband.

“You see, Brother . . .”

“Brother Christopher,” Chris introduced. “Brother Christopher Stein. I lead the school and the convent.”

“Ah yes,” Jacob expressed as he cared for a bob. “You see, Brother Christopher, we have a daughter-“

“Our only daughter, Brother.” Lauren butted in.

“Our only daughter, she is,” Mr. Dayton echoed, glaring down as he fumbled with his fingers. And as Brother Christopher had observed, the shadows that lurked around the desolated corners of the room had crept to his face and compensated his mood through sketching dark gashes under his weary eyes. “She had undergone quite an inappropriate transformation as she became of age and we have decided that your aid would be best.”

The moment’s stillness evaporated as a surge of heat rose on Brother Christopher’s cheeks he could only imagine himself flushed. “So is this to let me know of your endeavors to enroll your child in Saint Therese’s?” he asked, layering his anxieties with a mask of casualty. “How old is she, if I may ask?”

“She’s sixteen, our Bridget,” Lauren informed with a spark of enthusiasm, though it had been uncovered to Brother Christopher that it wasn’t the casual stir of the meeting that provoked the verve from the couple, but because he had been wrong. “But we’re not really planning to enroll our daughter in your school.” she explained.

Chris’ eyebrows sunk into a perplexed furrow. “Excuse me?”

The guests swapped amused glances at each other, and the Brother could only endure the wave of heat simmering his face. “We came to request for a member of your congregation to lead Bridget onto a transition, if you permit.” the husband pleaded.

“And what is this situation that we’re dealing about?”

“She’d been in a rebellious phase, Brother,” Mrs. Dayton spoke teary-eyed. “We don’t even know for what reasons. One night things we’re all fine then the next morning she would just roll her eyes at us.”

“I’m sorry if this would come to you as an offense, Mr. and Mrs. Dayton, but I think you’re consulting the wrong assistance.”

“But we believe that God’s way is all different. She is taught by the Sisters of the Holy Call, she was raised God-fearing.”

“But we should remember that we presume this girl a rebel.” Brother Christopher ran his palm across his face, contemplating. “I’m sorry; Mrs. Dayton, but you’re using the Catholic faith as rather a control system.”

Lauren was rendered inarticulate by Christopher’s sentiments. Her husband who incessantly eludes any chance to meet the Brother’s gaze was never deviated from being drained of words to say.

“And we also apologize, Brother Christopher,” Jacob’s tone was low. “We just really thought that a spiritual transformation would be best for her. She matures and keeps on discovering pristine things and so we thought that she could be worse if she merges herself with the wrong attachments.”

Brother Christopher was occupied as he, once again, thought of Brother Maxwell. In a matter of years, he would take his vows as a Gabrielite Brother and it was a pride to recount that the years prior his profession was evidence to the idea that it came to him almost naturally; as if he was appointed by God Himself to be in Holy Service the way Saul anointed David.

Brother Maxwell’s graces were a gift. His journey to arrive at the peak of being solemnly professed has been of hard work and patience. Brother Chris and his Brethren have all been witness of this. The Archbishop was convinced by Father Gideon’s. Also carried away was the Bishop’s agreement. He was made to ask for the Pope’s fulfillment of the request that Max be made a Servant of the Lord as he had proven his merit.

Of course, the wish was granted. But despite all the humble achievements, Brother Christopher would look onto Maxwell. The younger Brother would smile- an empty kind. It was as if he was all skin and bones and devoid of soul and consciousness. Without looking through the walls of a consecrated life, Brother Christopher thought, a huge part of his life remains a puzzle unsolved. Before Brother Maxwell could be certain of his decision for his own life, he should be conceded to encounter a lot more things- he deserves it.

The desperate prayers to have Brother Max within the influence of the Gabrielites were encouraged because there were no other options that would decide on his fate. And it loads Brother Chris’ chest with superfluous guilt to discern that the younger Brother’s faith came to firm existence because there were no other places for him to veer onto other than the Church.

But it would lead him on the wrong detour if Christopher would make him realize it directly; make Brother Max sentient that what propels him to reciprocate God’s call was the fact that he was abandoned. And so Brother Christopher thirsts for a subtle procedure, and laid in front of him is an opportunity.

“I accept it,” Brother Chris deliquesced himself from the enervation that came with his trance. “I should assign one of my younger Brothers for the task.” A hint of satisfaction was evident from the Daytons’ faces. “Although the sessions should take place somewhere else other than the convent. The men enclosed by the walls of this convent are somewhat irritable when having a young lady around.”

***

Brother Maxwell closed his eyes as he let the sharp edge of the scissors to run across dark strands of hair that hung close his forehead. He was seated in his room, clutched on the armrest of the only chair inside his chamber that creaked its age as he leveraged his weight on its back. He gasped for air, though he expected the stench to be soft and warm, it stung his chest to have breathed in the frigid atmosphere of a crisp Fall.

No one is deviated from the circle of the cold breeze, and if certain people perceive this season of the year as a lot worse, Brother Max is undeniably one of them, the others being the rest of his brethren. The chambers didn’t do more than to clear the tract for the cool breeze to pursue its worth. There were neither fireplaces nor furnaces, and the scope is pretty much denuded of any embellishments or furniture.

His bed was humbly firm on one corner, veneered with thin sheets of blankets and beddings. A table was beside it, stacked with a pile of books a guide towards spiritual reading like A Story of A Soul and Confessions of St. Augustine. On the other side of the low bed was the closet, comprised of nothing more than his dark religious habit.

Brother Max was all aware that he allows himself to let a trance conjure him in a meditative way, clasping his eyes tightly shut so that not a shade of light gets pass through the still darkness of his thoughts. He let the rustle of Brother Matthew’s tunic to subside from the hint of his consciousness and focused the streak of his attention on one thing.

He reflected on his life here within the small walls of the convent. It wasn’t long after his parents had requested the Brothers to allow him to live with them, and to eventually drift alongside with them in the tranquil river’s flow of their daily routine when he comes in the perfect age. He could still remember that rainy evening. It was dark and the wind was whistling it’s eliminating strength. Episodic chances would occur when a flash of lightning permits a glance of the soaked streets and fallen branches.

His father, Antonius Seton, landed a callused fist against the wood of the convent’s door. Brother Maxwell, Max, formerly, was carefully veiled within Martha Seton’s embrace, his face pressed against his mother’s beating chest, and he heard it as she gasped while the massive door was unlocked, its hinges grating against the violent roar of the heavy rain.

“Good evening, may I help you?” the voice Maxwell heard was deep, vigilant to the point that it was almost warning.

“Y-yes.” Mr. Seton stuttered. Standing at the arched doorway was a religious Brother. He was in a sleeping attire of white robe, his slumberous eyes squinting through the thick curtain of shadows. He had a set of broad shoulders, poising himself in an upright posture so that he appeared to be like an intimidating police officer. Flashes of swift light would unravel the silvery hue of his short hair.

By the time his father’s voice was succeeded by an extensive interlude, Max lifted his face so that he cranes his neck to observe the Brother’s appearance. The one that humbled him the most was his looming height- a tall shadow against the orange glow illuminating on the background. It was then that the young Max detached himself from what he used to believe that the Gabrielites were gentle- although he wasn’t sure if this impression would be the same thing for the others, but the one on his front looked stern.

“You see,” Max’s father gathered his thoughts back. “My wife and I were distressed by a very serious problem and we decided that we couldn’t retrieve the tranquility of our life back if we wouldn’t do any sure gestures.”

Thunder bellowed.

“With all due respect, Sir, Ma’am, but I find it would encompass this meeting into a respectful one if we introduce ourselves first.” There was a shock of formality in his voice that expressed the image of his authority. Whoever this guy is, Maxwell thought, he leads something.

Mrs. Seton made a dull sound in her throat. “This is my husband Antonius Seton, our son Maxwell, and I am Martha.” She reached out a hand which the Brother gently took and shook.

“My name is Brother Christopher Stein; I supervise the school and serve as the superior of my brethren.” By this point, the young Max observed, Brother Christopher’s tone underwent a transition to settle into a casualty, though the firm tension that hovers his shoulders into a square indicated he wasn’t that comfortable. Then Max remembered that it was in the middle of the night.

“And as what you were saying,” Brother Christopher continued. “I do understand that whatever your errands are, they certainly require immediate response, but I don’t think it beholds a considerable urgency to be a reason to rush in here in the middle of the night.” He shared, his voice tainted with a touch of impatience.

“It is urgent, actually, Brother Christopher.” Maxwell’s father defended. “As a matter of fact, it is urgent enough to compel us to come up with a compromise and rush things as soon as possible.”

“Well maybe we should recommence with this conversation inside.” The Brother motioned towards the room behind him. The lamp stands were on, revealing in a lavish sight the furniture to indicate the room’s worth of entertaining guests.

Max was carried away by the warm welcome. As he lifted a foot to take the first step, his mother’s restricting clasp pushed him back. “I don’t think that would be necessary, Brother, we won’t be here for too long.” Max’s father insisted. “And that’s when we arrive to our point and ask you to allow our son to spend the rest of his life under your guidance.”

Max felt a quirk of surprise pulsate in his chest. “Dad, what’s happening?” he asked, craning his neck so that he was trying to meet his father’s dark eyes, but his palm was big enough to obliterate his sight and make him look down.

“Excuse me?” Brother Chris queried, though as Max raised his head to see his expression, he was far behind from being surprised. It was as if he had dealt with this many times now.

“We can’t go on multitasking, dealing with family and marital problems whilst worrying for our only child’s future.” It was Mrs. Seton, pulling Maxwell towards her radiant body so that he was pressed against her thick overcoat. “So we decided that he shall be raised by good hands and influence, and the congregation’s the best choice.”

“Without any formal procedures? In the middle of the night, Mr. and Mrs. Seton, if I may ask?”

“Actually, we are about to deal a serious bankruptcy,” Mrs. Seton continued as Max listened closely on the vibration of her chest. “Our business is about to be closed and we had a long meeting prior this evening. We had come up with this decision ever since we were informed that the life ahead of us wouldn’t be what it’s used to be, and we only want nothing more than what could be the best life for our son as of now.” She explained. “He’s empty, and I trust he’ll make a good product of your good way of living.”

With a pang of sadness syncing with the beat of his heart, Max, sure that he would eventually be Brother Maxwell Seton in his later years, and led by the soft hands of his mother, approached the warmth of Brother Christopher’s presence with youthful reluctance. He watched his parents vanish through the rain, with each quick beam of lightning showing them inching farther until they disappeared.

Max fell silent since then. He stood in the doorway, glaring down at his shoes as a mist of raindrops soaked it until its luster glistens. He fathomed every reason behind this moment, and none seems to make sense out of his innocent mind. He was sad, of course, and hot tears stung behind his eyes, and though the cold had somehow confiscated his small time to mind himself, he snatched himself a moment to think of what had happened and what will happen.

It was then that he felt a palm’s weight resting atop his shoulder, and he swiveled back to endure the lightness of Brother Christopher’s blue-green eyes. The stern lines of his face were superseded by the gentle settlement of his cheeks that his lips seem to curve to resemble a smile. He wasn’t intimidating, his utterances were no longer hostile; perhaps it was because he was no longer bothered, or perhaps because, as what Maxwell had thought that time, that his frail image was enough to induce pity- he was sure of this assumption.

Brother Christopher bent down so that their heights were matched. “Your parents were wise to have presumed this the best place for you to live in, and that this decision would mold you to be good, but I don’t think we could assure you the best life, brother.” He gently explained, any hint of sarcasm being far from the verge of his tone.

But then, Brother Maxwell didn’t seem to mind this. He knew he was being warned, that only a few preferred to be in the status imminent for him, that the days ahead of him are rather unlikely for a child ascending the flight of stairs towards maturity. All he did was wonder; wonder why he was left behind, and how destiny had played with him and allowed these moments to occur and leave permanent changes. There wasn’t any anger in his parents’ words or faces, but there weren’t any regrets either.

But as he came of age, he embraced his new approach towards garnering a life to the fullest, even against countless struggles and trials. On the night he was left under the hands of the Brothers, Brother Christopher escorted him towards a room- a chamber. Dull and desolated was his first impression of the space, with two beds and a few other necessities cloaked within the shadows.

He was surprised that he fell asleep almost as instantly as he lay on bed that night and as he responded to the slumber of the nocturne had he dreamt about his recent experience. He woke up calling out “mom” and “dad”, aware of the tears that streamed down his hot cheeks as he crouched on the floor at the fringe of his bed.

He didn’t want to get up, nor did he want to stop crying- the tears were burning his eyes. He just wanted to curl up on the cold surface; cringe until he was nothing. Strong hands came to pick him up moments after and hovered him to his bedside. A young boy with a mop of ginger hair patted his shoulder and whispered in soothing words that everything’s going to be alright. Maxwell knew that everything will be all right, that nothing would come and make him feel pain, but then he was sad and there was nothing to relieve it but to empty himself of everything- strip his past to allow changes.

It was a matter of days before he started joining his Brothers in early morning masses. Brother Jordan Gabe Bayley, the young man who tucked him back to sleep on his first night, became his closest peer. Brother Christopher took charge of his development and behavior. He loved prayers and silence and discipline ever since, and he had recently realized that he eluded all the harms a normal life would inflict him with.

This is the best life. Brother Maxwell thought as he became completely apprehensive that he has been weighing himself with thought that satiated his mind. This is the best life. He echoed presumably. This is the best life for him; maybe because he had noticed how much refinement has he took in his stride as he strolled off towards older ages, or maybe because he didn’t have any other phase of this world to compare it with.

“God would have wanted it more if you open your eyes and appreciate the gifts he had bestowed upon you, Brother.” It was Brother Matthew.

Brother Maxwell opened his eyes. His vision need not to adjust as the large prospect of it to rain brought dull clouds that filtered the sun’s light into a gloomy gleam casted from the window of his chamber. He looked himself at the mirror. He was on his black habit, though Brother Matt rather he should cloak himself with a spare cloth to prevent cut hair from messing with his attire.

“Thank you, Brother Matt.” He said, tilting his head to examine the tidy work of his Brother. Matthew was the convent’s barber, though he passed this skill onto Brother Jordan so that his hair, which was the color of lime, might as well be trimmed to suit Brother Christopher’s demands.

They both took a long time staring at their reflection. Maxwell had been with Brother Matt for as long as to enable him to accurately picture out his Brother from memory: the curly blond hair, the green eyes and his dimples when he smiles. He gazed at his own reflection and appreciated what had transformed him to how he is right now: the short brown hair, the slightly flat nose, the tiny dots of pimple on his forehead, and the dent on his chin. He was still slender as he had always been. This hoisted his height to be of prominence even more.

“God shared a bit of His perfection to you, Brother Max, didn’t he?” Matt asked as he put down the scissors held between his fingers.

Brother Max forced his eyebrows into a furrow. “How’s that, Brother?” he questioned, though he was almost sure where this would lead into.

“All the girls you walk by freeze at the sight of you and you don’t even notice just why?”

He does notice. Sometimes he would see it for himself, and all the time would be it from the people around him. “I think I do.” He answered, beaming. “I do. And I hate myself for it.”

“Vanity.” A deep voice bellowed, and it was by then that Brother Maxwell noticed a flicker at one corner of the mirror he faces. “The first thing I’ve ever suspected to corrupt your mind, Brother.”

He got to his feet, brushing the chair aside with a loud rustle against the floor. “Brother Chris.” Brother Matthew greeted. Chris nodded with a smile. “I’ve decided that Brother Max could use a haircut.”

“Just so that his pride be provoked, Brother Matthew?”

Matthew gaped at him, inarticulate, and it wasn’t long before Chris could let his edgy eyes dwell on Maxwell’s cowering image. It was yesterday that his Brother asked for a meeting with him, and he could tell by how many times the abrupt change on his mood had been triggered that he wasn’t courteous enough. It was a test and he failed, although it had been on this meeting that Brother Chris smiled the most times.

Brother Chris gazed at Matthew who froze. “Your task has been fulfilled, Brother, you could resign to whatever task you have in mind now.” He said.

Brother Maxwell let his eyes potter to follow Matt’s trail as he trod off towards the doorway. In a matter of footsteps, he disappeared somewhere along the hall.

Brother Christopher leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed over his chest. He was on a black cloak, standing like an obsidian sculpture erected on the place. His turquoise glare scrutinized Max who cringed with the mass of the attention.

“You’re being vain, you know that, Brother.” He said.

Maxwell, enduring rapid beats pulsating against the skin of his throat, nodded. “I know, Brother, and I am truthfully sorry.”

Brother Max lifted his head and wondered if Brother Chris had ever come across a line where temptation is inevitably pulling him to its side. He was charming with his silvery hair that seems to gleam like a halo. He resembled almost the rich man’s son they tell in stories.

He laughed faintly. “Everybody should know that even the cutest puppy bites.” He declared as he marched across the room, stopping by the closet and snatching a black cloak to throw it to Max.

Max caught it on his chest and curled it into a messy ball. “Can I take you out for a stroll, Brother?”

Brother Max felt his eyebrows sink into a bewildered furrow, fully apprehensive that he has his mouth open in a narrow breach. Against the cold, Brother Christopher’s lips flushed with a rosy color, and just as Maxwell’s yearn for clarifications ignited a series of questions, his Brother’s mouth delineated an amused curve.

“We need to talk.” Brother Chris informed, seemingly able to read the confusion traced by Maxwell’s twisted utterance. He let out a faint laugh. “Again.”

Deception – Chapter Four – Children Play

Brother Maxwell fixed his gaze on the ground, trying to play a game of his own as he fell from the heels of his Brother who trod in an unmatched pace. Cracks marked dispersed patterns across the pavements of the path, and so he diverted his mind by restricting himself not to lay a foot on the streaks.

A desire to navigate his own disposition had been a recent addition to his endeavors, but the directions that stood at every curve of the way had their signs peeled off, and the numbers that hung on every door of each house that lined along the street were vague to satisfy him. The only thing that currently comes useful was time, and he knows that it had been a long time since he heard the gates of the convent grate as Brother Chris led him outside its premises.

He swiveled back to consider the coverage of their stroll and noticed that they had marched for too long to make the cross that topped the church an outlying image. He prompted himself of his personal game and arrived in discernment that he had been almost tracing the cracks with his steps. Without a second squandered, he skipped.

By the time he felt his heart throb rapidly did he stop and take the moment’s chance to realize that he had been naughty, and also, that his Brother had ceased to go farther and faced him, utterly wearing his usual expression of austerity.

Brother Max froze feeling his reluctant smile diminish. Christopher squints as he let his bright gaze fix directly on the younger Brother. His lips were puckered in what Maxwell could only imagine as frustration. Then, the tension in the muscles of Brother Chris’ face seems to ease. That’s when he asked: “What question do you have in mind, Brother?”

A cool breeze evoked dried leaves to rustle as they skittered across the street, Brother Maxwell could observe. And now, he could feel the gentle blow of air tugging his habit. Max balled his fist, mad at himself for having been enjoying himself whilst being oblivious that his Brother had invited him for a stroll. He has been selfishly providing himself with fulfillment when Christopher walks unsatisfied.

A sound escaped through Max’s throat, but it was far beyond a word. Finally, a question flickered in the midst of his thought’s void. “Are we heading off somewhere, Brother Chris?”

The query was extemporaneous, but Brother Maxwell said the words as if his mind was heavily occupied by them and through this he concluded that this would have been the question he’d ask if he knew Brother Chris would be open about them.

Christopher shot his eyes towards the skies where rolling clouds of gray rain inched closer towards them. As he lowered his glare, his shoulders dropped. “I thought it nice for us to converse in a park, don’t you think?” Maxwell nodded. “There’s one over that curve,” he gestured towards a turn on the far north. “Don’t you know?”

Brother Maxwell endured a cold touch run down his spine. When he entered the convent, there was no coming back out. This had been the first moment in a long time. Surely, his superior would have known that he is far from able of locating destinations.

“I doubt I have been this far out of the convent.” He explained.

Chris’s expression fell grim like his skin had reflected the gloomy light of the clouds, but it wasn’t any bitterness that rendered his face like that, Max thought, but it was something he’d never felt from him before- sympathy.

The two stood there for a moment, locked in their own different looks. Max looked perplexed and nervous; Chris was almost inexplicit with the abrupt smoothness of his stare. Maybe he was clear about the authenticity of his emotions, Max told himself. It was just that his superior’s approach towards discipline was far from being gentle, and it was unfortunate for him to have grown used to it.

“C’mon then.” Chris thawed himself from the petrifying tranquility. “On your feet.”

Brother Max snapped himself from his trance and scurried to catch up with Christopher who retrieved the recent rate of his momentum. “Don’t you think this place is like a corpse, Brother Max?”

The younger one was appalled by how peculiar the tone of Brother Christopher’s inquisitiveness sounded, and he wasn’t compelled to respond to the query until he noticed that the older one looked at him sideways, explicitly expecting for an answer.

“Nobody’s here.” Chris added. His fast pace surely confiscated a percent of his ability to breathe with ease. The struggle was audible through the wavering of his voice.

Maxwell looked around and had immediately sought the proof to prop his Brother’s observation. He was right. No one’s around. But then he pulled his eyes down and locked them at the fissures that ran along the pavements. He wasn’t in to recommence with his own little game anymore, but he noticed blades of grass protruding from the rifts. It was a lucid depiction of how eager life is in here. He knew they were dead, but it was conclusive to disagree that Pockettsburg is a dead place to start with.

“I don’t think so.” He said with a voice so reluctant he was almost whispering for himself.

“For what reasons do you think?”

“Because it is likely to rain and other people would prefer to lock themselves indoors.” This wasn’t his reason, but then it wasn’t a lie either.

Brother Chris’ gaze glistened with amusement much to Maxwell’s surprise. “If you may permit, Brother Max,” he said wistfully, his footsteps incessant. “Our conversations should be somewhat like lectures. Well maybe there would be moments when I would ask you of certain sentimental questions.”

Brother Maxwell gaped at his superior’s back, though episodic chances would allow him to catch Christopher snatching a glimpse at him from his back, clearly provoking a casual stir for this stroll. Max didn’t know what to say. He was, in fact, a little out of his mind; his head felt light and devoid of any optimistic thoughts.

Perhaps the ongoing turbulences circling around politics had induced a predominant impact in the society. School had been suspended since yesterday, and he could tell by Brother Christopher’s recent behavior that he has been pestered by it as well, especially when a politician accused of corruption is trying to layer his foibles with the Church as a deception.

“That sounds fun.” He just answered. He found it hard to spoil these small chances of having Christopher set in a fine phase, and he could tell as he glanced back that he was grinning.

“Here we are.”

Maxwell jerked into a halt. The park seemed ethereal, or maybe it’s just because he’d never grew up seeing so many places as this.

He could tell by the park’s margin that it was circular. Brother Max could sometimes evaluate himself as claustrophobic, but never in a sense that he fears being enclosed in narrow tracts, but it’s because he has an incomprehensible craving for vastness and against the dull image produced by the place, the view satisfied this yearning.

Dull. The park was dull because the trees were denuded of the brisk hue of its leaves, and the towering clouds that loomed above the clearance cast a faint, silver glow. Cobbled pavements stretched towards numerous curves, but Chris led Brother Max towards the lake where a bench was allocated sadly facing the waters. As they trod, Maxwell noticed that the flowerbeds were stark, deprived of the feeble animation of blooms.

Brother Chris maneuvered towards the seat and gesticulated for Max to occupy the spot next to him, and together, they paid heed to the stillness of the lake; feeling the calm breeze that constantly blew.

Maxwell locked his gaze straight ahead of him, his glare eventually coming across the lake to a couple perched at the parallel side of their position. As he observes the boy gently lacing his arms around the girl’s neck, he felt a jolt of piercing sting behind his eyes.

A sight of romantic closeness prompts him of the night he was left confiscated of parents in front of the convent. He remembered the simmering of the love as his mother clasped him within her embrace, and through recollecting that the prospect of getting to meet them again is declining does he discern how empty he was.

“So are we going to talk about politics once again, Brother Chris?” he didn’t know how he came up with such question, the silence made it even harder to extract words even from the highest depth of his mind. But against the bemusement, he was thankful he was able to fend his emotions.

He could notice from the corner of his eyes that Brother Chris had slumped back against the bench, tracing the back of it with his fingers as he stretched his arms sideways. “This time would be different.” He said. “Though we’ll have to go back to that later on.”

Brother Max couldn’t make out the reason behind his Brother’s eagerness to extricate every single one of his opinions about politics. Wasn’t he too young to be involved and infused with wisdom to compensate what it takes to help propound a good way of leadership? But it wasn’t politics that subdues Maxwell, it was the establishing pressure he endures as Christopher seems getting more and more desperate.

He looked into his peer’s turquoise eyes and noticed the same glint in them when he was asking so many questions to him yesterday. His temples itched and he wondered just how this meeting would be different.

“I have an assignment for you, Brother.” Christopher started succeeding an extensive interlude of silence. Max shifted on his seat, tilting his head so that he took time to consider Brother Christopher’s unsettled gaze. “And the vow of obedience would restrict you from declining to do it.” He prompted.

A tension elevated a pulsating sensation in Brother Maxwell’s throat. Strict orders from his superior didn’t come as new to him, but it was the reminder of how he is suppressed of any rationales to neglect the offer. Does this exhibit an altitudinal urgency to be highly considered?

“Don’t you think I’m still quite incapable of performing heavy tasks?” he knew asking questions is one step away from sounding disobedient, but as his confidence dropped because of Brother Christopher’s odd tone, he needed to search for a subtle way to cut himself off the line.

Chris buried his face in his palm. “Will you find it funny if I say that against your judgment that you’re not good enough is the truth that you’re the only one who seem fit for this one?” he asked, his voice hostile.

Max pursed his lips into a thin line. There was almost an air of familiarity in the abrasive sarcasm of his Brother- like it was an old friend. He shook his head. “I’m sorry, but yes.” He let a gasp of cool air sting his chest. “I do think it funny.”

“That’s bad,” Chris mumbled as he lifted his face off the clasp of his hand. He faced Max who was startled with how calm his stare had turned into. “Because I don’t, Brother Max, I don’t.”

Trust. This had been the least thing Max could ever imagine Brother Chris has towards him. Christopher is a depiction of stubborn leadership that looms inducing an intimidating aura. But despite the suddenness of the revelation that Chris might, in fact, have trust in him, Maxwell thought that maybe it was his pessimistic discernment of his Brother’s aspects that obliterated the truth from his perspective- that Brother Christopher does find him trustworthy and versatile.

“May I ask what this task is, Brother Chris?” he knew that frustrating the dark dashes of desperation across his Brother’s face was immoral, so Maxwell was conjured by his conscience to be open towards the assignment.

There was a glint of fulfillment sparkling reflected light from Christopher’s eyes, Max noticed, as he said: “Misunderstanding could sometimes make us blinded from the mistake we have stained ourselves with. There is this girl. Her parents went to me this morning. They were seriously bothered by their daughter’s rebellious phase.”

“And you wanted me to lead her into a conversion?”

“Exactly. Although I can’t see any reasons as to why he should disagree, I wrote a letter to the Bishop regarding this issue.” Chris’ voice rose with expectancy which became the foundation of the pressure rising inside Maxwell’s chest.

“Don’t you think there is a reason behind her madness?” Brother Max asked.

“Elaborate.”

“You know,” Max curled his fingers into fists. He knew little about parent-child relationship. All that he’d grew up believing was that he was abandoned, and he knows that the count of all children in the world bounds him from being the only one who was left without having a considerable explanation. What makes him different from all other children, he thought, was his deprivation of any vengeful endeavors. He was glad that he was raised being scrupulous. If he wasn’t, he would have ended up being like the girl. “Maybe her parents made it a choice for her.”

“It can’t be.” Brother Chris assured. “They looked promising and seriously needing the help, Brother, you should know that it’s not only me that will be disappointed if you won’t shake on the deal.”

Maxwell let in a gulp of the frigid breeze. He stared up ahead and noticed the couple on the adjacent side of the lake was soundly asleep. “Why won’t they just call for a psychologist or something?”

“Simply because they wanted us to help and not a psychologist, but you will act as one of course. Besides, I think she might need a glimpse of Heaven, Brother Max. Literally.”

“I’m sorry, Brother, but I just don’t think I would prove effective enough.”

“Just be her friend.” Chris suggested. His cheeks already blushed with the simmering impatience. Max’s mind was just subdued of his view of how inappropriate a protocol this is. “I told you once that you should just set yourself an example. Or you could show her you understand what she’s been through and that you think the way she does. You need you, Brother Max, just you.”

A blow of icy air slithered across Brother Maxwell’s skin, eventually clearing his mind until he was thankful he finally came up with a decision. “Okay then.” He said. He faced Brother Chris just in time to see his glorious grin. This was when things were finally settled and silence devoured any spark that could enkindle another problem.

“Have you been in love, Brother Max?” Chris asked with a smirk just as when he thought the tranquility would be somewhat perpetual the way he wanted it to be. He followed his Brother’s gaze and discovered it was shot on the slumberous couple from far across.

A wave of heat masked Brother Max’s cheeks. He had never felt it, save the times when he realizes how attached he is to his Brothers and how he sees himself as absolutely below God. But not a single fairytale or love story’s definition of the word could ever link these feelings to the certainty that it is indeed love he is enduring. He knows lucidly from books that romance is a generic synonym for love, and he never kissed someone passionately or clasped himself on an embrace with someone in a manner everyone describes.

“Love is a just a child’s play.” He said as he never really knew so much about it.

A cloud of cold escaped through Brother Christopher’s nostrils. His pale face was delineating a grin. “Well aren’t you too young to enjoy it?” He asked.

Deception – Chapter Five – Shadows Devour

“It’s pretty simple,”

She could feel the surge of cold slithering across her bare skin. Cars darted by as flashing beams of bedazzling yellowish light and haunting crimson. She could hear every piece of dried leaves rustling as the frigid blow of wind gently drifted them along the road. From across the street, Bridget casted her dark brown gaze over a strolling couple, both dressed up for the season.

She was accustomed to Art’s arrogance which pretty much smothered an unfavorable impression on their relationship. Instead of going out on dates at fine restaurants covered up with evening dresses and suits, they’d be out embracing the devouring shadows of the dark parts the city had almost kept to itself, dressed as burglars, but with no such intentions as to steal.

“You go into that house we had recently found out about-“

“Because your mom told you to get a life,” Bridget butted in, a wave of heat incrementally veiling her chilled cheeks. “Seriously, Arthur Spencer? When your mother deems you worthless and tells you to get a hand of yourself, you don’t apply as a gardener at a stranger’s house you’re so suspicious about.”

“It paid the price betted by my curiosity, though,” he answered. Through the thick curtain of the shadows, she could see the impassive image of his lips stretch into a glorious grin of satisfaction. “And I was right. Plus, it made a good front to make Mom think I’m trying to get myself useful.”

“You were always right.” Bridget concluded with a faint snort. She expected to have his handsome face be distorted by the sarcastic remark, but he took it as a compliment. She rolled her eyes.

Many times have they been out and about doing things that test the limits of their personalities. If this is anything but love, Bridget endures all these adventures as a way to asses it. They have embarked on several pranks as of now, mostly directed to Art’s best friend, Simon, and these have been enough to enable her to evaluate just how strong a bond do they have.

Arthur is about being transparent and brave. She settles them as his own approach towards love despite the uncertainty of how these two different platforms are linked with each other. Transparency because he gives justice to the fact that this is looking beyond imperfections; that they need not to change, although they ought to be.

This goes down to his being brave because he isn’t subdued of the thought that his persistence of never satisfying what Brie wanted for him compels her to hang by the ledge. Brave, she ruminated, because he’s ready to know whether this relationship would work out or not.

It would also be dauntless for Art to never be anxious of insisting that Brie should cling by his interests. Bold undertakings fulfill him, after all. She could see the sparkle on his eyes when his gaze meets hers during his basketball games. He would restrain her in a tightly warm embrace when he pushes himself out of the throng of cheering fans.

It had all been guilty pleasure; of sweet times lapsed with moments of disappointments and tears that would soon be wiped off. Her tolerance of his selfishness has been a string, and now it has become withered the way nothing could last forever. But what is prominent of Bridget’s romantic perspective is the way she attempts to perpetuate this resistance. Being an unreciprocated provider makes her feel loyal.

“Are you cold?” she thought it was too long a pause before such question would make her face flush, she could feel it.

Two years of their closeness was almost impossible under the supervision of the Sisters of the Holy Call. Run by Catholic Sisters, Bridget’s boarding school was exclusively warm towards girls but was very rigid about infusing them with the appropriate form of discipline. They must’ve expected all their students to graduate from the school as nuns.

But this goal would be frustrated by the plays the Sisters encourage their enrollees to arrange. This would be the time when culture-shocked girls get to sing and dance and garner smiles and commendations out of boys from other schools.

St. Vincent Ferrer’s School for Boys was part of the huge audience when Bridget Dayton played Eponine on their school’s successful attempt to stage the famous Les Miserables. After a standing ovation concluded the play’s performance, the cast was dispersed across the whole theatre by the embankment of amazed guests who thought it best to have a picture with them.

Bridget could recall it well when Arthur Spencer’s voice seems to hush the clamor that causes an amiable tremble inside the room. As she swiveled back to a mop of neatly slicked, dark hair and athletic physique, it came to her that nothing ever mattered than the two of them. The handsome boy just said she did great and that he wants to have a picture with her.

Bridget was clouded with reluctance. The query caught her in a staggering surprise when she took heed of the dirt deliberately smothered across her face as she reprised her role. “Are you serious?” she asked, then came the guilt of having said it to a pleading gentleman.

“Yup,” he said it in such a fine tone. “And I can’t believe it would take me to witness an amazing girl’s performance to be certain that I like her.”

He would have noticed her blush if it wasn’t because of the masquerade of the makeup. Art’s friend, Simon, held up the camera by his face and squinted an eye as he took the image. The quick flash beamed over a grinning girl in a tattered dress and a boy in black coat and trousers coiling his strong hands around the girl’s shoulders.

Perching themselves over his car’s hood allocated her somewhere beyond what she used to think about Art. She remembered the second time they were able to meet each other. They swapped phone numbers shortly after the show that night and they were able to contact each other when Saturday came. Weekends disregard the restriction of gadgets of both their schools.

Pockettsburg Park shone with green and gold at the time they agreed to meet there. It was a warm spring and the sun illuminated bright gold as it seem to have focused its beam on Arthur who stood from his seat on one of the benches with a confident grin. His dark hair was tousled outside the strict demands of his school, his green gaze considerate as they met with her dubious, hazel ones. He was on a leather jacket; she was on a white Sunday dress.

“I almost didn’t recognize you,” he had said, gesturing over the wide space of the bench. “You looked pretty with charcoal smeared all over your face, how much would it be without the makeup?”

She had felt herself flush once again, not only because she was stuffed up by compliments, but also because she knew that without the makeup, her pale cheeks would explicitly flurry a hue of faint red.

They could have slumped back against the windshield and link the stars into constellations, but the weather overshadowed their gleam and they didn’t start with the right foot to be in such activity.

Bridget just shrugged, but then Arthur seem to have understood that she was, in fact, cold, and slid off from his jacket and muffled her with it. It wasn’t the thickness of the coat that gave off such radiance, she thought, but the yearning to have their every night as sweet as this.

“Just take me home, will you?” she said, deliberately fixing her tone to make it sound like she was exhausted. “I don’t want to be caught up with the curfew.” She wasn’t lying at this point. Even youthful joys are devastated by the ongoing turmoil ignited by mad protesters and corrupt government.

“But this is how we bond together, isn’t it?” he said. This was the only escape from the world of compensating disputes and rallies. She had been looking at him with the eyes of the most desperate beggar, noticing that he was someone greater than her and that she needed something from him. But then he whipped his head quickly to face her with the same gaze. This confiscated her the time to look away.

“This is adventure, Brie,” he softly added.

“This is getting us in a huge trouble.”

“You know I wouldn’t do that,” he replied as he gently ran his hands atop her shoulders, and she slowly succumbed into his warm embrace when he pulled her close to him. “I would know it when something bad would come right at us.”

“So how do you feel about breaking into this house?”

She was answered by his silence, but then he said: “Do you trust me, Brie?”

She thought about it for a moment. “Will it be okay for you if I say that I find it hard but then I’m trying?”

“I don’t know,” he responded. This gave her a breath of relief being certain that the conversation didn’t extend to a longer series of questions. “But I won’t blame you if you don’t, you know?”

“Why can’t we just be like them?”

“Be like whom?”

“Them,” she pointed towards the couple she had saw earlier. They had inched away into an outlying distance, but then she was certain Art could see them enter Starbucks. “Why can’t we just go out like them, talk about our future together, and taking each other home. Take me anywhere else.”

“Where?”

“Somewhere that is not like this place.” She snapped.

Arthur seemed to have been appalled by how the impatience he had induced on her raised her voice. But then he got over with the bewilderment with no such effort and drew a weary breath- a cloud of cold air coming out of his lips.

“All there is for you to do is go inside that deserted place and grab something.” He said.

“And what benefit would it give me? The both of us?” asked Bridget, looking upset and exasperated.

Art made a clicking sound with his mouth as he shook his head. His shoulder appeared to be tensed, but then his utterance looked casual as usual. “Nothing,” he replied. “Nothing in particular, actually. You want this love to take a new step. I wanted that, too. But maybe you should do this to mark the end of how we used to be, and the beginning of how I will keep the promise of pushing in a good relationship between the two of us.”

The pressure that had churned inside Bridget’s chest seemed to have dissipated, superseded by an enlightenment that sent a quirk of enthusiasm to run down her spine. “I would do it,” she had leaped off the car’s hood and caught Art’s startled hands as she pressed her lips against his. “But give me one good reason why I should be the one to do it.”

The excitement that speeds the throb of her heart was the familiar sensation she had felt the first time they have embarked on an adventure as this. She recalled it a night of laughter when they entered by Simon’s bedroom window and shaved off both of his eyebrows while he lays deeply asleep. The next weekend, Art had texted Bridget that Simon had come to school that Monday with a pair of eyebrows, just that he had his sister draw it for him and that he was heedless as to who might have done it.

Arthur let out a faint laugh. There was a glint on his emerald eyes when he did it. “I was the one to open the cage for Simon’s monkey the last time.” He defended. They both snickered against each other’s shoulders. Simon had asked all his neighbors to know that the culprit is beyond who he is able to identify.

Maybe ending such a different way of spending time together would be something to be regretted, she thought, but isn’t this why she was doing it? This night is going to be like closing a vault’s door to lock a collection of precious treasure. When Bridget leaned forward for another kiss, she could feel Arthur’s lips curve into a smile.

***

She faced the gate.

The distant glow of the nearest streetlight casted a faint light over the red of the partition.

It loomed over her for just an inch or two, topped with metalwork that resembles pointed fleurs-de-lis to fend any trespassers away. But if that was, in fact, the purpose of these bended strips of metal, she thinks it best if they stay significant being embellishments.

Bridget curled her fingers into fists, drawing in cold breaths that sting her chest with an amiable ache. Her heart is throbbing hysterically, that answers why she had to respire several times in a brief moment. She was anxious, subdued that there might be someone lurking within the shadows of the desolated house.

She swiveled back to delineate a dubious gaze on Arthur from across the street. She ponders that this had been their adventures taken to another level- a risky platform, and her reluctance to satisfy both of their childish wistfulness is being taken to the height of the risks.

She gave him a shrug. He gave her a thumb-up- a reassuring endearment by the time.

When she had gathered enough assurance and confidence, consider the way she had made sure that the surrounding has been deserted, she turned to face the gate once again and stretched her arms up to grasp for two pieces of pointed metals.

The gate’s goal of driving away people conjured by cruel intentions had been frustrated by the fact that the spikes are separated with enough space for Brie’s feet to mold into. In a swift moment’s time, she was crouched on the house’s front yard, scrutinizing the swallowing darkness for any imminent danger.

She was thankful that it was Art’s apprehensive-sounding cheer from the other side of the gate that welcomed her way inside, and not any wild dog sneering about her face as it props itself to maul her.

The house was unoccupied as they had suspected it to be. Not a flicker of light had shown. No creaks of any opening doors or windows, no haunting echoes of footsteps, no series of beeps to indicate that a distressed person is trying to call 911. The slight tremble of her fingers was shriveled by the certainty. She ruminated on her mission: go inside the house, grab something from inside, and this would be the last of her troubleshooting.

The screen door induced a grating sound as she opened it and started with the locks. She had mastered the burglar’s strategy of unlocking doors with hairpins as they went with their adventures, and now hearing the click from inside sounded almost like hearing her name being called.

She carefully twisted the doorknob and pushed the wooden door with gentle force. But then it seems to be of hardwood- carved, heavy and, of course, noisy. She could perceive the chill running down her spine as she opened it with a loud grunt. This restricted her craving for space as she ended up making the breach just enough for her to fit in.

She fell on the carpet face first. Just as she retrieved her energy and the calmness of her heart did she decided it enough to be laying around and prop herself up with shaking arms, leaning against the door to slowly close it with a clamor.

She locked it afterwards. She rather that if the occupants of this house would spot something missing, they would be convinced that it had probably been just misplaced; or if the stolen property’s rate of value would be alarming enough for them to seek the police’s aid, they would close the case without concluding that there had been any forced entry. This is the front portion of the house after all, Bridget had thought with a sigh. Surely, there would be a lot more windows and doors for the exit.

She had shrugged off of Arthur’s leather jacket before she could indulge herself in such activity. But now an appealing sense in fashion could have been disregarded especially when the transition of the seasons encourage whispers of cold air- the problem is that she might have been unaware of this.

She was on a black tank top and tight leather pants that grip her legs with an almost bothering tension. She had thought the attire would give her the ease and a wider range of movements. And although this precaution was never frustrated, she learned that daring outfits could never go against a cold weather.

The interior of the house was veiled by shadows, save for the windows that cast the outstretched beams of streetlights. One window was allocated at the other end of the house. It stretched in a wide rectangle, showing the evening sky as it soared at the high part of the wall that deprives her of the chance of peering through it. As it filters the lights of the neighborhood, it had a bright streak steered over a massive round table.

The reflected light caught Bridget’s attention. Around the glint, although engulfed by shadows, were heaps of assorted objects. Piles of books were mounted at one side of the circle, disarrayed papers layered a huge part of the table’s surface and a few other stuffs settle disheveled.

It’s easy. She ruminated. Just get a piece of paper and go.

In full apprehension, she slowly maneuvered towards the table, eluding some of the furniture as she marched across the living room. She went through a partition she temporarily admired. It was embellished by an array of bent metal that condensed into an alluring pattern.

As she scrutinized the work that divides the living room from the area where the round table is, she had noticed pictures frames displaying photographs. One was massive, extending almost like a window itself. And although the obscured letters rendered her barely reading them, she thought that person on the image was familiar in a way that triggered her heart onto a rapid throb.

Before she could match her breath with the pace of her beating heart, a flash of orange light that ran across the glass of the frame caused her to stagger back. She swiveled back to know that the dazzling gleam passed through a window, and through the window she could see a car that is about to enter the gate.

There was a loud, metallic creak. Surely, she thought, the gate has been opened. She couldn’t waste any time. As if in cat-like reflexes, she scurried over to the table, occupied with her main goal. After all the trouble that came imminent for her, she thought it best if this mission will be worth the risks.

She had grabbed something rough, but smooth enough as well. It is as if grains of sand were pasted so closely attached with each other it made a canvas her brother would always use for his paintings. But it isn’t canvas, but a brown envelope conveying a heavy pile of papers, she could tell.

The house’s interior had been a series of doors laid flat against a wall of darkness, but as she was ducking under the circular table, she noticed an open room on her right. She should be warned by the muffled sound of clinking keys from outside the front door, but letting this awareness subside, she sprinted towards the space.

Bridget is in the kitchen, and as she was bemused as to where to go, the lights that flickered on from the living room handed her a guilty pleasure. One thing that relieved her was that the features of the tract are more visible. But if one reason should cause her to be anxious, it is the fact that the house’s occupant could be anywhere close.

As if in a daze, she swirled herself in a slow circle, studying the set of windows so small she could hardly get half of herself through. But as she motioned hopelessly, she was given a sigh of relief as she noticed two doors.

There were episodes of haunting thuds, and as she squinted her eyes to stare at the section of the room she had come from, a tall shadow appeared by the surface of the floor.

Her wishes were betted on an intuition that the doors lead into desolated rooms, but instead of yielding into her doubt’s constraint, she slowly twisted the cold knob of the door on her left and pushed herself inside, closing it afterwards with a grace under pressure.

The person would have made his way to the kitchen, Brie was certain, and as she was carefully locking the door did she notice the light from outside passing through the narrow gap below the door, the shadow of feet would episodically disturb the unruffled beam.

She could have been cornered if she wasn’t fast enough and now she was able to search the room for any way out. She thought about Arthur for a moment. He could have been hysterically alarmed by now. Along with the moment to contemplate about how Art’s current distress must’ve been mutual for the two of them was the fact that she seemed to be in a storage room which, she believes, could buy her some more time to have a clean escape. Storage rooms aren’t some places usually visited.

Two sides of the room convey glass windows this time were low and wide enough as to enable her to break herself free off the mental delirium this restrain has been inducing to her. In an impressively maintained silence, she pressed a palm against the glass of one window and slowly slid it into a breach enough for her to fit in.

Arthur appeared in her mind once again. He was fulfilling his own contribution for the last of their adventures- motivating her so that they could be like any other couples around. She felt a surge of heat flurry on her cheeks as she smiled at the thought, and as she let the cold breeze caress her face, she was enthralled by an assurance that he will be there just where he is before she left, making out her figure from the cloaking shadows with wide eyes as she gloriously runs towards him.

She let the thought recede as she snatched herself back to reality. She was looking down at the grass below, embracing the overpowering emotions churning about her chest as she considered this night as an accomplishment.

Her landing caused a faint rustle on the bushes that cushioned her fall, but it was great enough for her that she had finally deviated herself from the horde of danger prying on her. She could feel the tension that gripped her heart and lungs with a violent pressure withdraw, replaced with excitements as a story to tell had finally clouded her mind.

She was stooped as she trod across the lawn and towards the gate. Heart pounding, she stood in a safe distance from the house and compelled herself to act casual so as to deceive to any passerby that she was just as any other visitors that would come in this place. Also, a part of what she was deceiving was the shocking glance of reality that she faced.

They have parked on a dark side of the road; with the car almost as black as the place that she could tell they were almost invisible- save for the reflected light that causes the car to glint and catch people’s eyes.

Simmering tears were brume to her vision as her breaths were stolen by her sobs. With her footsteps lapsed with long moments of pauses, she sauntered ahead. There were no glints to mark the luster of Arthur’s car. He was ready to betray Brie’s trust in case she was caught, let alone to let her face the consequences of the decision they both made by herself. Turns out he was so scared for himself and not for Bridget that he had driven off.

Deception – Chapter Six – People Choose

Senator Gordon Wilmut has evaded an evaluation of his patience’s endurance as he passed through the security check in a jiffy. The White House is home to the president of the United States and his family. Entry ways and exits are barricaded by men in dark suits and impassive expressions during casual moments. How strict could its security be if the president is conspired to be accountable to the country’s low economic status?

Maybe conspired is an inappropriate term for that. The Senator had his lips curved in a smile as he passed by several guards standing by doors like statues of black stones. He knows the truth- everybody knows the truth. It’s just a matter of acceptance or going against it.

The White House is big enough to be comprised of several bewildering series of identical doors. But as he sauntered along the hallways did he discern that he had been walking across this place for a long time now as to navigate his destinations by instinct. Meetings and negotiations would have been organized in President Ferguson’s office, but the leader himself insisted that they should be on the House’s drawing room.

Wilmut was summoned by Ferguson’s call, and as he queried himself as to why the meeting is to be done in a casual section of the house did he ruminate on the echoes of the President’s invitation. James Ferguson had requested for someone to converse with during tea time, and he had thought Gordon is the most favorable pick.

It was the first time in an extensive span that there were no yells coming from outside the House’s fences. People were too certain that the President and those under his influences have been feasting on their money. But there might have been a factor that ceased the flare of their rage for today.

Gordon doesn’t wish to play a role on this affair, and he was glad that his attempt to save his reputation was warmly accepted by the public, although this made him despised within the circle of Senators. It also haunts him to think that the President is being suspicious towards him.

But what was there for the president to do? The essence of the Senator’s life is that one thing that would convince President Ferguson that he promises his loyal service to him- Wilmut never failed this. His wife divorced him out of the craving for a private life and some more familial bonding, and he wouldn’t be able to see his son for Brent was old enough to decide for himself, and he decided that he wouldn’t want Senator Gordon back in his life if he never shows any passion of being his father. Most of all, Senator Gordon Wilmut seems to be the only one under Ferguson’s presidency who does not belong to the same party as his colleagues, but still, he proved his fidelity towards his superior.

Against the losses, the Senator wasn’t able to protest which lead him to understand that he was indeed too indulged with his own career to deserve his family’s forgiveness. There were conditions given by the court of course, to make their reunion possible, but Gordon had long disregarded them. And now he is on a tug-of-war between his family and his job; of two of his passions; of two things that would define who he really is. There should be one thing that would be best for him if he chose it, but it seems like his life had fallen onto a pit, and either of the choices couldn’t lift him up anymore. His choices had betrayed him, and now it feels like his life is waning.

The simultaneous thud of his own footsteps resonated almost like his beating heart as he undertook numerous curves and trod deserted corridors. After he took the final turn, he paused for a while. He was faced on an image of two guards poised guarding the double doors of the drawing room. Their sunglasses would have been used against the white of the place and the brightness of the lights that beamed nearby, but they were for inducing an air of authority and to add an apathetic effect on their faces.

“President Ferguson had invited me for tea,” Wilmut spoke with the suited man on his right, a wire dangling from his ear. The guard was clearly avoiding any chances of getting his focus center on the Senator, so he was looking ahead, his lips puckered in a thin line as he stood in a stern immobility. In a matter of insensibly executed bob, the man clutched a gloved hand on the door knob and lead Gordon inside.

The White House’s drawing room is like any other drawing rooms of the mansions he had ever been into. An alluringly crafted set of furniture is arranged closely to the fireplace; altitudinal bookshelves stocked with volumes of books were attached to the walls- all bathed with a grayish white light as the giant window that made up one side of the room strained the daylight through. Sat by his desk was President James Ferguson, occupied with a written assignment.

On an unknowingly person’s perspective, the President would have been remarked as a regular business man. The streak of white strands dashed all over his dark hair defined his age. The luminous blue of his eyes marked the wisdom and cleverness he conveys. He was a living proof to the fact that although men could be rated at any level of being fashionable, suits would always look the same.

The wooden chair faintly grated against the carpet as the President got to his feet. He wore the usual warmth of his friendly smile. He would be mistaken as a man of a mind hazed with nothing more than clean business and fair deals, but then his handsome face seems like distorted by the involvement he has been into.

“Gordon,” the greeting Wilmut had received shot him with a painful blow in the chest. But the Senator couldn’t judge himself as being deceitful. It’s just that he had laid much of his trust on the person locking him in a friendly embrace before. And now the bond has been bribed and his good view of Ferguson’s being a good leader slowly diminishes.

“I have sent you to come and talk with the Gabrielites,” the Senator was ushered towards a seat by the crackling flames of the fireplace. Ferguson handed him a cup of tea which he undoubtedly accepts. “Did they buy it? Did you win their trusts?”

A replay of the Senator’s visit to the Gabrielites produced imaginative sounds of conversation in his mind: the innocent query of the lime-haired Brother who ushered him in, and of course, the utter bitterness at every word Brother Christopher said. He had warned himself of how distasteful the meeting would be before he could even set foot to the convent’s premises, especially because a group of religious as them was meant to seclude themselves from the rest of the world, and now they were being pestered by a government representative amassed with countless accusations.

But even with the indignity vocalized by Brother Christopher, Senator Gordon couldn’t blame him, and he was certain that the reception of Wilmut’s presence would be mutual for the rest of the Brothers.

The wistful tone of James’ questions sounded almost childish. Gordon pondered, and then asked: “Don’t you think it isn’t just right to be deceiving?”

Ferguson twitched, gazing at Wilmut by the rim of his cup. When he had set his tea down, Wilmut could see the grim transition of his expressions. “Gordon, I trust that you have concealed my, or should I say, our endeavors with strict confidentiality.”

Endeavors? The Senator had thought. How would such a word agree with some things that have been done? But then he let any subtle signs of disloyalty recede. “Of course I have kept the promise,” he lied. “My point is that people will choose to believe in what they think is right. There’s nothing we could do with it.”

“Oh, yes there is,” the President’s smile appeared almost like coming from the devil.

“Democracy fulfills the people’s right, Mr. President,” Gordon shook the bitter imagery of torture and raids off his mind. “Why can’t we just let them be? Why can’t we let things be? If you’re trying to prove yourself clean, why be defensive?”

James’ face that had once been flushed with wise answers turned pale and appalled. But then he said: “If we let them be themselves, they become reckless. If they lose control, the government will be convinced to take a leap of fate and become a dictatorship. This makes my being a dictator quite reasonable.”

“The people weren’t being reckless, Mr. President, they were evoking their rights,” the Senator debated. “They pay taxes, and yet you harvest them. And when this had sparked a reason for a rebellion- when your business turned out to be a validated reason for it - you exterminate those who go against you and those you thought have been going against you. The people are just putting their rights to work.”

“Is this infidelity, Senator Wilmut?”

“No,” his voice jumped onto an outraged tone. “I lost my family for you. I permitted myself to face infinite risks and entrusted my safety to those people who wish to throw me off of their way and you think I’m being disloyal?”

He would have been pleading to garner the President’s trust back, but Gordon wasn’t surprised to notice the shock masking Ferguson’s face as he got to his feet, enraged and panting. After reflecting on the astonishment he had caused, he slowly lowered himself back to his feet. He cleared his throat and said in calm words: “It was merely a warning, Mr. President, when time comes and you’ll be deprived of hiding places, the people will see involvement and innocence as one. They’ll sack us all.”

An extensive interlude of silence prevailed, but then the serenity was disturbed by the President’s laugh. “All this time you’ve been acting like a person coming from the wrong future and it actually all just because of the fear for your own self?”

Wilmut’s heart skipped a beat. He started to feel hotness touching the back of his eyes. “I’m afraid I’m not worth anything to preserve myself.” He said, and then looked away to the gloomy afternoon skies. “I think for the people. I think for you and all those who depend on you.”

President Ferguson made a clicking noise with his mouth, slumping back against his seat as he stretched his arms across the couch. “Look at you, Gordon,” he teased. “So dedicated as to be anxious. I recommend you should have a day-off and try to see the world as it is. Thank the hurricane for buying you some time.”

“Hurricane?”

“My friend, against the heavy loads of your job, you should consider watching the news.” But then the smile that the President rendered withdrew into a serious expression. “Have the Gabrielites gave us their trust?”

Senator Wilmut contemplated on the meeting with Brother Chris once again, although he brushed Christopher’s sarcasm aside. Gordon was envious with Brother Christopher’s confidence. The Senator had warmed him of the likely consequences of his defiance, but the Brother wasn’t scared if he incurs peril upon his brethren. Whatever it is that the Brother’s trust grips onto, it is something reliable and compensating. It’s the faith, he thought. He appreciated it.

“They did, although they insisted to remain passive when it comes to indulging with some conflicts.” Gordon reported, asking himself how many times he should lie for a day.

James nodded. “Of course. They ought to be exempted from the turmoil,” he concluded. “But you know what I would do if they went against us.”

***

The weather had undergone an abrupt stir, Brother Maxwell noticed. Scattered rain had defined the past few days, but now he could perceive the close whispers of a winter. Leaves rustled as they came meandering about the convent’s grounds and the bushes looked grim as they were deprived of their beauty. Brother Max witnessed this view through the frosted glass of the convent’s drawing room.

When the scene had arrayed itself to give off a sense of peace, the Brother had thought this an opportunity to contemplate on his task to guide Bridget Dayton. It would be tomorrow that they would be introduced to each other and he regards this has very awkward prospects, especially when you look through his growth and how he wasn’t able to meet a lot of people with perspectives from outside the convent’s walls.

He had once observed from Brother Jordan Gabe how a day in class is sorted with a lesson plan, and now taking an idea from this simple scheme of organization, a complexity of words rose like fog within his thoughts. This got him talking to himself. He imagined how they would talk in rigid postures and wavering voices; how each would be reluctant to be vocal about their sentiments.

What does she really need? He asked himself, he thought it best if he could put things in an array. Is she really like how I intuited her to be? Does she really need someone like me? But propping himself this way seems impossible to provide him with the confidence he needs. He would try to help a girl unknown to him, but how would he be successful at this if it is unsure whether Bridget would decry her own personality. And then there is this one solution Maxwell had bethought from Brother Christopher when they were at the park: Be a friend.

Before he could cast a grin of glory, a set of scurrying footsteps distracted him. The speed of the thuds seems to synch with the glorious throb of his heart.

“Brother Max,” Maxwell could observe through the distorted reflection from the window the picture of the things behind him. Brother Jordan stood by the door’s frame. His tone had been excited and stimulated Brother Max to pivot around to see his Brother’s tousled ginger hair and rosy cheeks. He looks breathless.

Maxwell let out a chuckle. “Can’t you take that smile off of your face, Brother?”

But Brother Jordan loosely considered this remark; instead, he widened his beam a little more. “Are you busy?”

“Of looking through the window, yes I am.” Brother Jordan Gabe snickered at this. Every time spent with the older Brother prompts Maxwell of how young he really is; of what joys he should experience during childhood and of how friendship makes up a special place in one’s heart.

“Sounds so urgent, doesn’t it, Brother?”

Brother Max nodded. “I could tell there’s something worth my time behind that smile of yours.”

Brother Jordan seems to twitch at a quirk of enthusiasm. He darted from across the room to grabbing Brother Maxwell by the elbow in such a brief notice. “Would you mind coming with me to the school’s entrance?”

“What for?”

But before Brother Max could protest, Jordan Gabe’s hands had pulled him along the older Brother’s stride. “Brother Chris finally agreed to my request for the school to start innovating.”

“Innovating?”

Brother Jordan Gabe’s unusual choice of words compensates his highly intellectual way of thinking, but Brother Maxwell’s question hung unanswered as he was lead across the thick layer of dead leaves enveloping the convent’s lawn. The trees loomed with haunting heights, and the clouds seem to have been tethered close the ground.

They headed past the fences that part the convent from the school’s grounds where the breeze struck Max with a shiver. “Don’t tell me I’m the only one not cloaked.”

Brother Jordan led them on a sudden halt, causing Brother Max to stagger back at the jolt of the gesture. With wide eyes and wavering words, Brother Jordan Gabe whipped his head to face him.

“I could have told you that while we were inside,” Brother Gabe regretted. They let out shared snickers, and before Brother Maxwell could say something in return, as if like lightning, they had recommenced with their short journey.

They stopped facing a view of the school’s front. Saint Therese’s bronze statue depicts the holy image casting her solemn eyes towards the sky, which, by numerous experiences, also encouraged Brother Max to lock a hopeful gaze as he makes out shapes from the clouds. Sets of damp benches lined along the edges of the grass; denuded bushes marked the verge of the places where the students could spend their time with fresh air.

The school itself is of thick walls of cream and mahogany paint. At the center of its façade is the rose that is commonly attributed to the saint; then came the pieces of silver that were set to form the name of the school. Windows lined the rest of the barrier.

The frosty air seems rawer out here, especially when the spot is exposed to the open. But what should be the quick succession of the leaves’ rustling movement is the tone set by the brooms stroked by Brother Charles Anden and Brother Aloysius. The older Brothers are assigned to maintenances and outdoor responsibilities while younger members of the group occupy themselves with light household activities.

The Brothers froze admiring the sight for a long moment, but just as they had retrieved their composures and Max started to wonder what is it that his peer would like to show him, Brother Gabe rushed, almost skittered, towards the school’s entrance. It was not the first Maxwell had seen his best friend as joyous as this: although certain movements should be convicted by his attire, Brother Jordan danced a step you would usually ascribe to a leprechaun. He sent several leaves flying from a pile gathered by the other Brothers as he darted on his way, and then shouted an apology.

For a moment Brother Maxwell couldn’t help but just stare at the scene under the gloomy light of dusk and appreciate it. But then as he let his eyes decline from looking at the skies to Brother Jordan Gabe’s trail, he was bewildered.

By the school’s entrance where his Brother stood stifled from the run is a glass pane from what used to be thick hardwood double doors. Caught by the intriguing transition, Brother Max, led by Jordan’s trace, jogged to join the other Brother who now exclaimed in excitement.

He hastened past the warm conversation of Brothers Charles and Aloysius. “The young ones are taking their time, aren’t they, Brother?” Brother Aloysius said through a panting voice.

“They should be,” Brother Charles replied as he bent to pick up some leaves. “Before their backs could go cracking like mine always does during this cold season.”

Brother Max embraced this moments as well; of his brethren being warm at his role within the convent. He is the child and as they thought there wouldn’t be any children within their premises for a long time, they allowed him to be as one for as long as he could be. The same goes to Brother Jordan Gabe who had once played with some of the students.

When Brother Maxwell arrived and restrained himself from his run near the glass doors, it opened automatically. As if by his memories’ instincts, he was suddenly drawn to a series of flashbacks; of his parents taking him to a mall and he and his mother watching Antonius coming out of the airport through one of these doors.

“Look, Brother Max,” Brother Jordan called with a muffled voice.

Maxwell was so absorbed by his recollections that he didn’t notice Brother Gabe stepping into the school’s hallways until it closed between them. He seized himself from his trance almost as suddenly as when he saw Jordan rendering a peculiar smile on his face through the glass.

Brother Max returned the smile as he crossed his arms in front of him to warm himself. Then it wasn’t long before Brother Jordan let the sliding door open as he stepped out into the cold and join Maxwell.

Jordan raised an eyebrow, his smile a kind of which an inventor would have on his face upon staring at his masterpiece. “A magnificent glass door to welcome you in, Brother,” he declared, then he took several steps back until he was swallowed by the door towards the interior of the school once again. Then he went out again with a haunting grin. Then back inside and did this routine for a few more times until Brother Maxwell was alarmed.

Max caught Jordan Gabe at the shoulder before he could make his way back inside again, agitated though with an air of patience. “Do that again and you’ll destroy whatever that makes it automated.”

At this, the older Brother succumbed into Maxwell’s warning and instead stood proudly beside the younger one who embraced the moment fixing his eyes at their faint reflection against the glass.

With the reflected picture as a preference, Brother Max could explicitly distinguish himself from his friend. He, himself, is 5’8 the last time Father Gideon asked him to lean against the kitchen’s doorframe so that the priest could measure his height. Brother Jordan Gabe is 5’10. Brother Jordan Gabe’s pale white skin stands out against Brother Maxwell’s olive complexion, and Brother Max’s neat dark hair overshadows Brother Gabe’s messy red curls.

Their features kept them contrasted from each other, but this wing of physical disagreement doesn’t almost matter when they pair up as their youth provides them with shared interests and wonders. They both marveled what it is to be just like any other teenagers. Together, they regarded the changes that replaced their youthful faces. Besides, in this world stuffed with people with varying sets of personalities, maybe the biggest similarity that could merge them together would be their having differences.

“A magnificent glass door to welcome you in.” Brother Jordan Gabe muttered under his breath.

Brother Maxwell nudged at him. “You have said that already,” he prompted, but this reminder never penetrated against his Brother’s concerns who maintained his odd grin. “It opens up right when you step close to it, doesn’t it?”

“Right.”

Brother Max shrugged as he let his gaze travel across the white of the door’s edges. “It does sounds like a magnificent way to welcome burglars in.”

Jordan chuckled at the thought. “It could be disabled if wanted.”

“How?”

“There should be some switch somewhere,” Brother Gabe’s words came out simultaneously in a fast pace the way he always does when he speaks Science. “Maybe it is at Brother Christopher’s office or somewhere. I’m just not sure.”

“How do you think these stuffs work, eh, Brother?”

Through the reflection, Max could see Jordan whip his head to face him. His Brother has a hesitant smile on his expressions. “It covers up several concepts that I’m sure you wouldn’t want to hear coming from my mouth.”

“You’re probably right.” They laughed. Brother Max indeed feels detached from Jordan when his friend starts to bring up scientific subject in their conversations. They see the world with divided perspectives. Brother Jordan Gabe sees it as how it really is while Brother Maxwell admires the effects of this world to the mind of a person. Brother Jordan Gabe indulges himself with science and technology, Brother Maxwell is absorbed by literature and art.

Before they were made to stand there for too long, a flicker within the reflected image caught Maxwell’s attention. Brother Charles and Matthew had long been gone. He turned around and shot narrowed eyes towards the school’s gate and settled his glare on a black car parked by the street.

He had spent so many times sitting on several benches at the school’s ground to be certain that this car is a stranger to the place. After a honk, a person came out of its passenger seat. The man was on a dark suit, and he was just buttoning his coat when his gaze found Max and Jordan and he waved.

“Is that-“but then Brother Jordan was overwhelmed by the peculiarity of the scene to finish his question.

“Senator Gordon Wilmut.” Brother Max harked back to his conversations with Brother Chris, and now his feeling towards the politician’s presence is unsure whether to despise him or be warm towards him. His virtues and the Senator’s pleasing demeanor tells him to be warm, but then Brother Christopher’s opinions reclaimed his decisions and incited a heat of anger inside his chest.

“He looks like he came here for us,” Brother Jordan concluded which Maxwell knows is the truth for the most part. The official is now waiting by the school’s gates, arms on his waist. “Should we fetch Brother Christopher? You know we shouldn’t come across some affairs ourselves, especially political ones.

It is the first time Brother Jordan had seen Wilmut in person of course. Excluding Brother Chris, Brother Matthew, and Brother Maxwell, no one knows of the recent visit of the Senator.

Brother Christopher’s words hearken back to Maxwell’s thoughts: how Senator Wilmut tried to lurk the Church to their side just so that people would think the government has been with clean business as to have the Gabrielites in favor with them.

Max thought that it could have been a considerable approach for Ferguson’s part, but then Christopher’s story of how Wilmut threatened the safety of the Brothers sounds unscrupulously oppressive.

When his indecisiveness began to subdue much of his thoughts, Brother Maxwell thought it best to agree with Brother Jordan’s idea. After all, Brother Christopher seems to be the only one crafted with the composure to be entrusted with negotiations.

“Good idea,” Brother Max affirmed as he lifted a hand to pat his peer at the shoulder. “We should go fetch, Brother Chris.”

***

“We don’t usually prepare this back at home,”

Brother Aloysius had asked for Brother Christopher’s opinions about his cooking, and so Chris was led from his office to the kitchen where the scent of interesting dish mixes up with the atmosphere.

The new Italian Brother guided Brother Chris by the stove where a pot of boiling mixture steamed. “A mushroom soup?” Aloysius offered him a spoon of which he happily took, and then dipped the utensil onto the simmering soup. Flavors flurried across his taste buds he could almost feel his stomach grumble.

Brother Aloysius wiped a face towel across his sweaty forehead. His eyes were anxious. “I’m surprised you could recognize it,” he said, making Chris flinch at the sound of his thick accent. He thought it is something worth getting used to. “I believed I have butchered its appearance.”

“I certainly disagree,” Brother Chris exclaimed through gritted teeth as he savored the emulsion of impressive flavors. “I doubt the Brothers ever tasted any good food up until you came around, Brother Aloysius. I wasn’t that of a good cook, but your skills are admirable.”

With that, Aloysius seemed to have found a reason to let his shoulders drop with ease. He cast a reluctant grin about his flushed face, the uncertain green of his eyes locked at the steaming dish. “Thank you, Brother Chris.”

Brother Christopher returned the smile. He was struck with incredulity to find out that the Brother’s anxiety with the taste of his preparation is nothing but genuine. “Thank you for joining us here, Brother Aloysius.”

Brother Chris just watched Aloysius as he reached out to switch the heat off of the stove and let the soup stream towards a glass bowl. Chris noticed the grace with the older Brother’s movements that seem to be a hint from his past. His head always seemed to be cowering like a depressing thought bothers his mind most of the time.

When the silence has long prevailed between the two of them, Brother Chris crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the sink, staring with marvel at Brother Aloysius who started setting placemats atop the table.

“Can you describe to me what life had been before the vows?” Brother Chris asked, tilting his neck at the side in hopes of meeting his Brother’s soft gaze.

At first, Brother Aloysius seems to be despicable of the question as he occupied himself with putting silverwares beside the plates. And just as Brother Christopher was gripped with remorse by the way he had asked the query, Brother Aloysius had placed the last of the spoons and clasped at the back of one of the chairs. Then he sighed.

“I was married before all this,” he said with careful pronunciation, aware of the misleading tone of his accent. Brother Chris drew all his attention to his Brother who shot his eyes towards the ceiling as if his memory is projected by the vastness of the space above. “It was an arranged marriage, actually, though we were content with how things turned out to be that we never complained. We have never spoken about our feelings. It was as if we never really took things seriously,” there was a pause. “Let’s just say there was a time when I loved her, and she never loved me back.”

The story had let Brother Chris travel back to his own past. It caused his memory to stir up until his imagination incited voices in his mind; of requited words of love and warm embraces. It presses his chest with tension as he reminisced with all these, and as the pressure rose and his heart had commenced to hammer hysterically had he thought it best if he would never withdraw himself from the promise he made for himself to never be submerged by such history.

As the sounds of laughter resided, he looked at Brother Aloysius who seems to be absorbed within the same series of recollections. Pain jolted through Brother Chris as he let the mutual feeling occur between them. There was no need for Aloysius to go further with his fairytale. The sad look on his eyes served windows to his downfalls, and his being a religious Brother obviously is a clue of his unsuccessful marriage.

“Brother Chris, Senator Wilmut is outside.”

Seemingly coming out of nowhere, Brother Maxwell’s voice rose from the serenity that reigned within the kitchen. Brother Chris whipped his head to the trail of the voice and let his sight dwell upon Brother Max who appeared by the door, accompanied by Brother Jordan Gabe.

Christopher’s chest was instantly restrained by a subtle burst of anger. “What does he want now?”

Brother Maxwell shrugged and Aloysius seemed to be untroubled by a stranger’s visit. But Brother Jordan jerked with curiosity the way he always does. “Now?” he asked, his thin ginger eyebrows furrowed. “Have you ever come across him, Brother Chris?”

Chris stuttered. Although there was no reason to be secretive about it, informing Jordan of his meeting with the Senator sounds like a step towards danger. He doesn’t want any more of his Brothers to be involved in such affairs with unstable consequences.

Instead, he just said: “Brother Jordan, could you please lock the glass doors for me? The switch is at my office and I trust your knowledge to keep you from destroying the thing. You could show it to Brother Maxwell here if you want.”

At this, Brother Jordan twitched with excitement and grabbed the dubious Maxwell by the elbow. “As you wish, Brother Chris.” Then he darted out of the room, Brother Maxwell trudging beside him. Chris followed their trail, but headed towards the convent’s lawn.

***

Senator Gordon Wilmut never appeared to be much older, Brother Christopher had seen. It had only been a few days since their last meeting but for the Senator’s aged body, it had been decades of declining health.

The streaks that marked the skin on his face had folded into a depth; his cheeks and lips the faintest of red the Brother had ever recognized it was as if the politician had been extricated of blood. He stood beaming by a black car outside the school’s gates, hands tucked in his trousers pockets.

When the distance between the two was pruned so that they were at each other’s arm length, Senator Gordon, rendering a weary smile, offered a hand for a shake- something that Brother Chris austerely neglected and instead, he deliberately shot his narrowed gaze on the official’s frustrated eyes.

Chris cleared his throat, and then crossed his arms over chest as if this will help the pounding pressure diminish. “I thought I have made it clear for you that that was the final straw for my side,” He said with his voice stern and unwelcoming. “I don’t want to hear from you again if it means anything from what you desire.”

Brother Chris is certain that his act of protecting the congregation from being bribed by the government means a step away from his virtues, and if the Senator knows of his weak point, he would have used this immorality against him by now. But there was a strange silence from Wilmut, something, along with his considerate glare, almost comes out as an understanding as if he had regarded how someone as virtuous as Brother Chris would react with the gestures he was asked to do.

This time, Christopher was made to ponder: Is Wilmut just being manipulated the way a machine is empowered by a certain source?

Gordon cowered and shook his head, seemingly overwhelmed by a jolt of incredulity. He must’ve never expected Chris to act this way. “It’s so courteous of you, Brother Chris,” his sarcasm, as Brother Chris had heard, is almost explicitly evident about his face. “But I came here for a different reason.”

“A different threat, you say?”

Wilmut breathed a cloud of cold breath from his nostrils. His patience is wearing thin. “Brother Chris,” when he spoke, Christopher thought he could almost hear the hardships behind his voice. “I did try to involve you into a negotiation, but it wasn’t my voice that threatened you. It was the President’s. I am his but his tool, Brother,-“

“His fool, you mean?”

The Senator brushed this aside. “As much as I try to convince him to take on more peaceful steps is my realization of many things in my life that remind me of not to put myself in jeopardy.” He explained. “You know how the President gets rid of his disloyalties, right?”

“And you’re ready to risk everyone’s life to preserve yours?”

They both stood there letting the cold breeze float along the space between them. A space of which, if closed, would mean two opposing sides merged as one. At this current moment, a handshake separates the Church and its future under a sick presidency. And Brother Christopher couldn’t do that, at least for now.

“You don’t understand, Brother,” Brother Chris could determine from Gordon’s tone that his grip to being gentle is getting loose. But what comes as confusion for the Brother is the fact that Wilmut seems to prevent himself from being overpowered by his temperament so as to maintain an impassive set of expressions. “I have told this to the President- I could just die and nobody would mourn for me. This gives me no reason to put myself before anything else. I just think I would come useful if there is ought to be a turn with things someday.”

A turn with things, that little voice behind Christopher’s mind echoed. Is the Senator weathering a big occurrence? Is there any predominant imminence? But all these thoughts were disregarded by the Brother’s decision that his passive reception of the government’s deal for the Church of Saint Therese is enough to keep them deviated from all these. And if the people of the United States of America are decisive enough, they would let themselves be actuated by a certain movement so as to suspend unlikely events from materializing into reality.

But is Brother Chris that insensitive to bear the notion of being never part of all these? What does his Brethren’s say? But instead of contemplating much on this, he thought it best to postpone the pondering on this subject. He will need much of his Brothers’ opinions.

“What is it that you want then?” Brother Christopher’s intuition told him of what’s inside the Senator’s mind as of now; of what he thinks is looming before the country. But there’s no reason to bring this up today. All seems like dancing sparks that are yet to kiss a pyre.

The Senator’s exhausted face lightened with a shade of luminous joy, then settled into a serious expression when he seem to have remembered what he had truly came here for. “A storm is coming, Brother.” He said.

“A storm?”Brother was appalled. He had read through the recent newspapers and listened to the latest broadcasts but the news of an upcoming storm was far from what he was informed with.

Wilmut let out a laugh. Brother Chris stared in awkward utterances as he witnessed the Senator’s chest rise and fall. Never had he fathomed someone getting as much comfort as this with his company and now he was left to be a spectator of a politician’s bliss. He endured the tightening of his chest as a warm feeling cloaked him.

When the uncontrollable episodes of chortles could never seem to detach itself from Senator Gordon, Brother Chris cleared his throat. This distracted Wilmut and made him notice the Brother’s failure of extracting the humor out of having a hurricane.

“Oh come on, Brother Chris, we all had a bad time so maybe we could try to find a reason to laugh for the moment.” Gordon Wilmut said against the dwindling sound of his chuckles.

“Well I couldn’t find a reason.”

At this instant, the gaiety had escaped from the Senator and his smile incrementally diminished. Now he rubs a palm across his belly. “We are about to face days of heavy rains and strong winds, Brother.”

But Brother Chris could only hush himself out of disbelief. “Have you taken over news networks now?” he switched smiles with Gordon- the last thing he would have done but something he couldn’t prevent as well. “Heavy rains while we’re on our way to winter? It’s going to be dropping ice cubes in here.”

“That’s precisely one of the probabilities, Brother,” Wilmut said. “Let alone Washington D.C is highly prone to floods and all.”

Brother Chris was too weary to fathom the worst case scenario out of everything, and now fathoming the likely condition of the district once the storm hits seems too heavy for his imagination to convey.

“When will all these end for the people of Washington D.C?” it was as if he had balled all that oppresses his comfort into a few words once he spoke.

“You will have to spare a certain count of people from this adversity if you will agree with me.”

“And what is this?”

Senator Gordon shifted, putting much of his weight on one foot. This shot Christopher a handful of suspicions. “Does this mean you’re finally giving my side a chance?”

“Forget about your side,” Chris snapped. After all, what caught his concerns were the people. “What is it?”

“Pockettsburg is higher ground,” the Senator started. “And I have decided to propose my plan of using your school or Church as an evacuation center to the President. But, of course, you would be entitled to your own choices so if I may ask you, Brother?”

Brother Christopher pondered about it but just for a brief moment up until he couldn’t find any reason to neglect the idea. “Why we would be happy to,” he affirmed. He could see Gordon’s lips pucker into a thin line of pleasure. “We’ll provide both the Church and the school. But when will all this be?”

“It is yet to be determined,” Wilmut informed. “The hurricane is effectuated by an inconsistent speed, Brother, so it would be better if you stay tuned in with the reports and keep yourselves prepared for a mass of evacuees.”

“I have made it clear that we’re supportive about this, Senator.” It was the first time since Wilmut’s first visit that tension that clasps on Brother Christopher’s chest was superseded by a light feeling.

“We’ll have the local government informed about this then,” the Senator concluded the deal. “And I guarantee this kindness of yours doesn’t apply to what I have first asked of you.”

Brother Christopher made himself certain that this idea had been a personal request directly from the Senator. And he had noticed the way Wilmut’s aspects is split between being unreasonable under his superior’s manipulation and being a man of good will when he finds himself against his fears. Reflecting on these observations, Brother Chris had taught himself to give people chances.

Without getting Gordon’s hopes frustrated, Chris offered a hand for a shake.

Deception – Chapter Seven – Paths Cross

It was after the day of Senator’s visit to the Gabrielite Brothers appointed to run St. Therese School Pocekttsburg that the class suspension has been lifted up. With what seems to be a cause of a miracle, protests had ceased and the government officials were confident that there aren’t going to be any of it imminent as Hurricane Dorothy inches towards the state.

An embankment of people muffled in Sunday dresses and heavy undercoats cascaded out of the Church of St. Therese of The Child Jesus to a foggy morning. The soft buzz of conversations and the faint sound of laughter stirred warmth along the atmosphere, although some of the people’s eyes reflected their anxiety as a storm approaches.

At the end of the humming stream are the Gabrielite Brothers in their dark cloaks and bowed heads. Against the contrasting design of their outfits, they were recipient to the least of the attention churning about the array of persons, receiving only curtsies and muttered greetings. They are all after social isolation after all.

When Brother Maxwell and his Brothers arrived by the convent’s gates, Brother Christopher, who led the aligned men, swiveled back and shifted his gaze so that his sight would cover the single file they have made. Max couldn’t remember he and his brethren being told to form an arrangement as this- maybe he had grown heedless of the call as the slumber clouded his sanity, but he was certain it was all part of the Brothers’ vocation which propounded a pleasing discipline among each of them.

The wave of Christopher’s hand suggested the group to a sudden halt, but Brother Jordan Gabe, who was left inattentive behind Max, attempted to walk one more step when he collided against Maxwell’s back. In situations as this, Brother Max couldn’t help but keep Jordan reminded that he is the better part of the absentminded Brother. He motioned towards Brother Chris who skimmed their alignment with stern expressions. When Jordan Gabe seemed to have studied the current situation, he straightened his back and whispered an apology close to Maxwell’s ear. Max accepted it with a smile and a nudge at Jordan’s stomach.

When Brother Chris checked on the Brothers’ appearance whilst on a haunting pace and hands carefully folded by his back, Brother Max thought that this is but another day as a Gabrielite. Another day spent roaming around the school’s campus as he tries to make himself useful. Sometimes he would find himself being told to write letters informing the parents of an assembly meeting, other times would have him watching over the students as they took a test in silence.

But as he thought of his appointment with Bridget Dayton, he felt like he had already started to climb a milestone in his life. This would give him a chance to prove himself, he thought; an opportunity to speak not by youth but by wisdom. He fathomed himself being solemnly professed. He wouldn’t have to wait to take his vocation to its limits. He would teach Religion, of course, and right now he has already organized his classes. He would talk about saints a lot. He loves to share his knowledge of countless stories of devotion because it had kept his faith enlightened, pristine after all these years.

But he forced his imaginations out and shrugged himself until he was devoid of any vain thoughts. After all, for as long as there wouldn’t be younger recruits that would join the Brothers, he would remain as the child of the convent. His ideas would be suspended in an unappreciated platform. He was indeed astonished to know of Brother Christopher’s interest on his opinions, let alone the fact that his superior was the one to see his notions as an enterprise among the other Brothers he has befriended.

Lastly, he doesn’t know of how long he will keep on justifying his merit. And now this deprivation of a glance to his future concerns him with the mind’s eyes that he will have to face loads of risk and temptations that would try to veer him off his plans for himself. Obstacles will greet you as you partake on a quest, he thought.

When there seemed to be no flaws with the Brothers’ appearances, Chris cleared his throat and announced in a voice like a sergeant’s: “We would gather in the dining room where we will wait for Father Gideon. Afterwards we will have to discuss this particular subject. No excuses, everyone’s entitled to their part of this situation that will be considered.” At this, Max inclined his head. He knows this wouldn’t happen. The first time someone was auspicious as to let him speak will surely be the last time.

Christopher continued: “All of us should be present, and when I say that, that means no checking on your work on hydroponics at the greenhouse, Brother Jordan Gabe, that should be indulged with next time. I’m afraid you’ll have to be late on facilitating the speakers in the gymnasium, Brother Felix.”

With that, silence prevailed, and the breeze grazed gently against Maxwell face he found it soothing. He tried to keep his attention from being much attached on the said meeting; after all, he wouldn’t play a prominent role on it. He would just be invisible.

When it had been too long and Gomez St. started to fill up with people early on their job, Brother Chris opened the gates with a loud screech and led them all inside. “Come,” he said, “Brother Aloysius prepared quite of a breakfast for all of us.”

All got to their feet when Father Gideon arrived to the scene of flawless serenity lapsed with clinks as silverwares go against the porcelains. Brother Aloysius did them all a favor and cooked bacon and eggs complete with fresh cow milk. Brother Maxwell thought the meal as a departure from Christopher’s accustomed bread and butter that would be washed into your system with a glass of water.

When the priest seemed to have endured the mass of attention tethered on him, he squared his shoulders and started to speak in alarmed voice. “I’m sorry I was late,” he said, gesturing for the Brothers to sit down and recommence with their meal. “Brother Christopher informed me of the meeting; of course, it’s just that there would be a marriage to be held in the Church in three hour’s time.”

Father Gideon Bernadone took his usual seat by the head of the table. Brother Chris, who was seated by the other end nodded. “Whose advisory classes are by the western section of the campus?” he asked in a deep tone.

Brother Felix Cornish raised a hand, and then followed by Brother Charles Lott. “Tenth graders, Brother Chris,” Brother Felix informed, the light slant of his eyes giving him a considerate character.

“Mrs. Goode and Mr. Montgomery’s classes as well.” Brother Charles added, casting an expectant gaze on the head Brother.

Chris shifted on his chair. At the other end, Father Gideon started digging up his plate. “Well, can you please temporarily hold your classes by the gymnasium’s bleachers by the second period? We’ll ensure there will be no nuisances to intervene the event at the Church.”

“Well I appreciate the consideration, Brother Chris, but I don’t think there wouldn’t be any need to-“

“The children could go a little mad minutes before their health break, Father Gideon.” Christopher butted in. “Brother Felix, Brother Charles, if you could please follow this up to the other teachers?” the two Brothers bobbed.

No one is surprised by this aspect from Brother Chris, especially Brother Maxwell who witnessed much of Christopher’s darker side while he served as his assistant for some time. Even when Father Gideon is reputed by his priesthood, Brother Chris sees it that the priest is in charge of the Church only. This encourages him to evoke his stand as the school’s head to decide for the school.

Father Gideon doesn’t seem to mind after all. He paints a set of impassive utterances across his face and devoured a bite of bacon. “May I ask what the discussion will be all about then?”

Max slumped back against his chair as he knew this is the part when the only thing there’s left for him to do is to hide under the table. As for the rest, they leaned against the verge of the wooden table.

Chris took a sip of his milk; appreciating the priest’s invitation to finally bring up the subject. “I bet all of you have heard of the approaching Hurricane.” All around the huddled group of Brothers, nods were exchanged.

“Hurricane Dolores, right.” Brother Jordan Gabe said by the brim of his glass.

Eyes were pulled towards the redheaded Brother as soon as he said it, but Maxwell just shook his head and muttered an It’s Hurricane Dorothy to his peer who happened to sit beside him. Of course, how, in any way, would they be separated?

“Right, Hurricane Dorothy,” Jordan set down his milk and now a faint glow of red appeared against the paleness of his cheeks. The Brothers drew smiles across their faces, even Brother Chris seems amused. “But I’ve gathered that the hurricane is still gaining strength from the pressure that penetrates on it. Let alone the hailstorm that is expected to be accompanying its landfall. Meteorologists said that this will be the strongest in decades as of now, my Brothers, even if it still can’t be felt and it’s on its weakest.”

A trade of wide gazes occurred inside the room. The last storm Brother Maxwell could remember hitting with such impact that agrees to Dorothy’s descriptions was the one Washington D.C endured when he was turned over to the Gabrielites. Trees gave up to the strong blows of the wind brought by Hurricane Larry, and the Brother could only imagine what would give up now that the looming storm sounds stronger than ever. D.C was submerged by that time, with only Pockettsburg rising above the floodwater’s surface. Hurricanes are named alphabetically, and Maxwell stopped counting how many hit USA between a couple of years as to go from L back to D.

“Well I’m glad I didn’t get to be the one to explain it all for you all, Brother Jordan,” Chris agreed. “And now that a strong hurricane will be on our midst, and that several States are expected to be affected, Senator Wilmut had approached me yesterday if the government could designate our school as an evacuation center. They considered the fact that Pockettsburg is higher ground and that the school could accommodate a huge number of people.”

“So did you agree, Brother Chris?” Brother Maxwell found himself intrigued.

So the Senator had asked for a favor from Brother Chris? He had concluded. It hadn’t been long after Chris had confided his bitterness towards Senator Gordon and his attachments. It was all because Brother Chris mistrusts the government especially now that its superior, President James Ferguson, is subject to speculations.

Even from afar, Max could see the way Christopher’s lips were pursed into a thin line. Brother Chris had read from Maxwell’s expressions what the younger Brother is trying to get into, and now without being oblivious about the conversation they both had, Chris rendered an assuring smile on his face.

“I find it hard to disagree when it’s the people’s wellness that is being entrusted to us, Brother Max.” he said.

Even if it means working with the side you so strongly despise, Brother Max whispered to himself. Although it knocks him with a pang of guilt to judge, Max thought that Senator Wilmut is a Master of Deception, and that it’s possible that he had figured out the Church’s weakness and is step-by-step lurking the Brothers to his side.

But as Maxwell locks a dubious gaze on Brother Chris, there was a glint on his turquoise eyes that tells something that the situation is a chess game, and he’s got a move in mind. “Of course.” Brother Max affirmed, reciprocating the smile his Brother gave off. There a flux in Brother Christopher’s composure that seems to light up his mood.

“I have also ensured that the Church will open its doors for the evacuees,” Chris continued. “But of course, I would bring it up to the Senator that this isn’t possible if you would disagree, Father Gideon.”

“No, of course, I would agree,” the priest shrugged. He didn’t seem to think about it before permitting. “It’s an act of charity of which is strongly encouraged among all of us. Together, we could cluster in a small group and celebrate Mass if needed. ”

“I agree,” Chris exclaimed in a regal note. “Now all we have to do is to distribute tasks of preparation to each one of us. Is there someone who would like to volunteer for a certain responsibility?”

Brother Matthew shot his hand in the air. “Brother Charles and I could check the place to see what needs to be fixed.”

Brother Charles added: “We could try to cover up some whole or tie up some things you wouldn’t want the Hurricane to take.”

Christopher was delighted by this. “I’ll send John and Ed to help you out then.”

“The greenhouse had grown some vegetables and fruits to boost up our ration.” Brother Jordan confidently suggested.

“Well maybe you could harvest them by today?”

“I’m afraid not, Brother Chris.”

“Why not?”

Jordan Gabe’s green eyes widened, when he finally let go of his words, his voice was wavering. “The storm would landfall in what? Two, three days’ time, Brother? It would require some refrigeration to be preserved, and I’m sure they’ll cut off electrical supplies for that to be impossible. “

“Well then make sure those plants are well taken care of, Brother Jordan.”

With the tension seemingly retreating away from his shoulders, Jordan let out a breath, and Brother Maxwell is puzzled as to why his friend would display such anxiety. “As you wish, Brother Chris.” This seems to be Brother Jordan Gabe’s favorite rhyme.

“Anyway, the local government will be informed of our stand as an evacuation center so they ought to provide us with supplies,” suddenly, as Maxwell had observed, Christopher’s face undergone a grim transition as if he is imagining the probability that Wilmut has only left them hanging on a cliff. But that would be improbable coming from the Senator’s part now that he is desperate to merge the Brothers to his side. The Gabrielites are also too virtuous to actuate such betrayal. “They ought to.”

When silence had long prevailed, Brother Aloysius lifted a palm. “I could cook.” He offered in a distinctive accent.

Everyone smiled. “That puts us on the kitchen when this time comes, Brother Aloysius.” Chris said.

“What about me then?” Brother Felix asked agitated as much as out of place.

“I’ll give you a list of ingredients and materials, Brother; you could go out to the stores to buy them.” The pleasure was marked by Felix’s smile as Chris said it. “I believe Father Gideon’s presence would be enough to ensure the evacuees.”

“Not when they will find out I’m scared as them.” Father Gideon conducted the Brothers to a chorus of laughter.

“Well I think that concludes out meeting. We should embrace this moment with the students because it wouldn’t be long before the classes will be suspended once again.” Brother Christopher peeled the table napkin off his lap and placed it on the table in a crumpled ball. “I’m glad this didn’t hold us up for as long as I’ve expected, and I’m very sorry to intervene with your routine, Brothers. Thank you for giving me your time.”

Soon enough, chairs grated against the stone floor as the other Brothers got to their feet and started streaming out of the dining room. Brother Jordan asked Max if he would like to join him go out, but Brother Max insisted on staying for a while, restrained by something he waits of Brother Christopher.

When Christopher’s gaze dwelled upon Maxwell’s seated image, it was as if a memory flickered behind is blue-green eyes as to have him jerk in surprise. “Oh, and Brother Max, the Daytons have called. They said you could meet Miss Bridget by eight o’clock today. By that you could have lunch with them. I think you would find yourself enjoying their company, and they would find themselves drawn to your personality.”

Brother Maxwell felt his cheeks simmer at this, but he brushed the flattery remark out of his concerns. But he never stayed for this moment to be acknowledged. “I’ll be there as early as I can, Brother Chris.”

“You could catch a cab to St. Elizabeth Street, house 327. The place is not that far if you’ll ask me, Brother Max, just a couple of minutes.”

“Yes, Brother.” Maxwell lowered his gaze and studied his folded hands atop the table’s surface. He kept asking himself if he was nervous, and although a huge part of him says he is, a small voice assures him there’s no reason to be; that even if there really are reasons to be concerned, none of them proves significant. When he imagined what formulates into his anxieties: the awkwardness of meeting a girl and having lunch surrounded by strangers- he thought that his fears were, in fact, unimportant and shouldn’t be worth his bothers.

Maxwell was surprised when Brother Chris took Father Gideon’s seat which was almost the closest the Brother could get. Max thought he had left, but then the atmosphere seemed to have flipped into a serious air.

Max was startled when his Brother’s intimidating glare met his because beyond the usual austerity was the softness. “I know this sounds like nothing urgent, Brother,” Chris started with voice sounding like coming from his soul. “But you have been missing a lot of essential things out of this life being enclosed within this convent. I want you to feel a different kind of contentment. I wanted you to go through certain pains and tense decision making. A whole wide world is waiting for you out there and you wouldn’t want to miss it.”

A hundred thoughts came flooding into his mind, but they don’t seem to agree with the question that lies within his head. “Why, Brother?”

A lot of things should have come with this brief query: Why Brother Chris never neglected him the night he was showed by the convent’s doors? Why does Brother Chris bother to let him wander the world in freedom? “Why does he care? But any answers seem okay in the end.

Brother Chris never paused to think about a reason. “You’re a gift, Brother Max, everybody sees that and you might have considered that about yourself as well- and maybe you don’t and maybe wouldn’t want to see it from yourself.” he said. “As I’ve said before, sometimes, there is a need to look through the walls of your faith, Brother, because in the end you get to decide for yourself- you alone. Now if you see yourself in the outside world, you might find yourself engaged in a different thing of secular sorts. You might not want all these that you have right now to be how your life will be up until it ends.”

Brother Max could feel his eyes well up, though he doesn’t know for what reasons. He pondered that maybe it was because of Brother Christopher’s concerns of which are the last things he would expect from him, but then he was overwhelmed by the imaginative pictures flashing across his eyes. He saw himself growing up with his parents, far from their inconsiderable reason for leaving him to the Gabrielites’ care; he could imagine himself wearing stylish clothes, enjoying normal stuffs normal people of his age would be absorbed into.

But then what is there for the young Brother to do when the foundation of his life is his years spent behind the closed doors of the convent. Back when he was inquisitive about the way of the world, he was fed with wise answers coming from the faithful men that covered up for both his parents. In fact, he had seven more fathers and mothers to nourish his growth.

And what are these things that he wanted for himself? He wants to be a sharer of stories of devotion; he wanted to guide people towards a sacred life the way he was instructed to. He wants to be solemnly professed. If he is to pursue his life as a normal person, it would seem like he had turned back to square one- like he was abandoned once again, deprived of anything.

When Maxwell had retrieved his composure from the bewildering thought, he spoke with subtle confidence. “I really appreciate your concerns, Brother, truly.” He said. “But as of now, nothing seems to cloud my decision of spending the rest of my life under the roof of this convent.”

When it was time for Brother Maxwell to catch a cab, the sun injected a spread of gray light across the horizon. But in spite of all the bright changes, the specter of the nigh hurricane could be perceived through the metallic stench mixed within the passing of the icy wind. The clouds conveying loads of rain appeared floundering to the ground.

The gentle hum coming from the cluster of students inside the campus surrounds him as he walks to the entrance it seems like a sound wave enveloping him. The cold sinks deep into his religious habit where it stings him. His first social engagement got him conscious over his image. Before he emerged from his chamber after breakfast, he has taken a second bath and changed his habit onto a freshly washed one. He had also made sure his hair was arranged perfectly in place so that he would arrive on what he would like to call his most presentable appearance.

The creviced pavements were slippery as he sauntered by the side of the convent past its fence towards the school’s grounds. Here, by the brink of the circle clearing centered by St. Therese’s bronze statue stood several trees. Stone benches erected under the shades of these plants, and as Brother Maxwell let his vision skim the groups of students sat on different benches, his eyes settled to Brother Jordan Gabe who was huddled with some of the children.

Jordan’s expressions, as what Max could notice from afar, exhibit the rare times the most articulate Brother would grow impatient. His eyes were a deep furrow, gaze fixed and narrow and his lips are gently pursed as he mutters something to himself.

Brother Max also regarded the way his closest peer’s face seems to bloom as if the dullness of the daylight didn’t affect him as much as it made Maxwell’s light olive skin a shade darker. But as Brother Max scrutinized the outlying picture of his Brother, he had noticed shadows dancing about his face, and that the brightness that he had thought was Jordan Gabe’s natural paleness was actually coming from a phone he was clutching on.

On a reflexive trigger, Max crossed the circular tract until he could perceive the sound of laughter coming from Brother Jordan Gabe’s compressed group. When he stood in front, hands rested on his waist, everybody was heedless of his stern presence as all of their eyes were carefully fixed on the phone which induced an exasperating repetitive sound that resembles a bird’s flap and a ting.

“This bird is pathetic,” Max heard Brother Jordan say as he froze waiting for the perfect time to snap. “I mean look at his wings. It’s too small for his bloated body.” Jordan added as he tapped on the phone’s screen incessantly.

Then there was an inexplicable sound that sent the children snickering and Brother Jordan Gabe stomping his shoes whilst blurting out incoherent sentences. “What was your highest score again, Jack?” he asked the boy, Jack Willowson, who was looking at the phone by Jordan Gabe’s broad shoulders.

“15, Brother.” The 8th grader said as a crimson glow appeared on his cheeks. His friends burst out in distinctive tones of laughter.

When Brother Jordan Gabe bragged that his latest score went above Jack’s, Brother Max who can’t seem to overwhelm the simmering of his head, cleared his throat.

Heads whipped as they turned towards the trace of the sound. The students got to their feet in anxious but silent apology when they took heed of Brother Maxwell. His brain keeps on projecting his own image within his thoughts: the angry set of his eyebrows, the tight lock of his jaw and his intimidating posture. It was the first time he has to carry out this violation of the school’s rules.

Although he towered at least an inch more than Brother Max, the bewilderment that glints within the green of Brother Jordan’s eyes was explicit. And when the prevalence of the stillness of the scene spanned for too long, Max couldn’t help but start with what he came here for.

He stretched a hand towards Jordan, aiming to take the phone that was held in the other Brother’s clasp. “Brother Chris had made it clear for all the staffs and Brothers,” this time he latched his gaze on Jordan Gabe’s. “He said that if we are to witness a student’s act of a violation to the school’s norms, we have every authority to mend the situation. Brother Jordan, could you hand me that phone?”

Max had realized that his aspects are a departure from the kind of person he had always been seeing from himself. He considered the steady beat of his heart as confidence phased out his usual hesitant nature. His voice sounded deep enough to make the students and even Brother Jordan flinch. Maybe it was because of the turn of the weather, he thought, but he had mixed feelings when he made himself certain that this transition of his personality had been brought up by Brother Christopher’s counsel. Am I really growing up to be as tough as Brother Chris? He asked himself.

But he shrugged off the idea as there seems to be no place for it this time. In front of him, Brother Jordan appeared desiring to say something, but prevents himself from doing so. “But Brother Max,” he finally said once he had retrieved his composure, though his voice was thick with reluctance. “I promised the children not to surrender the phone to Brother Chris as they swore they wouldn’t do this again.”

Incredulity came as a pound in Maxwell’s chest. “Brother Jordan, I believe you could be better than this.” It caused him to cringe at the sound of his own words. Turns out he couldn’t keep on hearing himself talk to his Brother like this. “Of course that promise wouldn’t be kept. How will you know if these children sneak gadgets within the school’s premises? They have more tricks up their sleeves.”

“I never knew you as someone who says things as this to the children,” Brother Jordan regarded. “You’re making me nervous now that you sound like Brother Chris.”

Maxwell couldn’t quite make out his feelings about this sentiment. For now, he endures a hollowness that makes him compare himself to a box. But as he ruminated on Brother Jordan’s words, he got himself sure of something: he’s living up to Brother Christopher’s expectations of him.

“But something needs to be done about this situation.”

“Maybe we could give them a chance,” Brother Jordan insisted, though rather pleading than opposing angrily. “They may break their promises to me, but I would make sure I’ll never be the one to break my own and you don’t want to be the one to make me.”

His mind whispered to him a series of debating thoughts. Brother Chris had urged him to be able to look through the walls of the convent which basically means he shouldn’t let his religion cloud his judgment; that at some point one should considerably segregate sins and the wrongs done for the pursuit of goodness. He ought to remember there these two things.

But as much as he wanted to satisfy Brother Christopher’s desires for him, the current situation doesn’t seem to take Max on a progress. Besides, it’s the government’s deceitful approach that Brother Chris is bracing Max for, not the children’s violation of the institution’s rules. Plus, he couldn’t sever his friendship with Brother Jordan because of such insignificant reasons.

When he had let out a breath and he had dropped his shoulders, he handed the phone back to Jordan. This decision caused Jordan Gabe’s face to bloom as he caught Max in a quick embrace once he returned the gadget back to Jack Willowson.

When Brother Maxwell had shaken off of his peer’s hug, the bell rang and the children filed towards the school’s entrance. “So you’re going to the Daytons?”

The wind blew Maxwell’s cloak to a dance. He looked at Brother Jordan Gabe. He thought that the only way to help a person is to know what troubles them- who they are. He marveled at how he came to know Jordan; how he knew the ever-jolly Brother is upset when he falls silent and loses interest on how things were made, and how he follows Jordan around without his being told about it.

There was a non-verbal communication going on between them. They don’t need to ask for each other because at each other’s side would their instincts tell them to go. There is this bond that makes one the half of the other. Brother Max tried to make out the history within the strong friendship he shares with Jordan Gabe because being a companion is what could seems help Bridget Dayton after all.

But then, the past is vague for him. He can’t trace the beginnings of such friendship and this disappointed him and got him say in reply: “I’m nervous, Brother Jordan. This curious case of Bridget Dayton subdues me harshly.”

Streetlights protruded from the silvery surfaces of the pavements. By the time Brother Maxwell had arrived it St. Elizabeth Street, the rain had let loose heavy drops. Thunder bellowed and lightning proved itself brighter than the sun as it flashed against the daylight.

Block 327 was one of those that you would see lining up a city, though the place is situated at a rather serene location. Houses of gray bricks appeared almost identical with each two stories high and separated by rusted metal fences. Small lawns preceded the doorsteps.

Brother Max rested a hand atop his head in hopes that this would at least keep most of his formal appearance dry, but his hair has already gone damp and he could feel the raindrops soaking his habit. He stood before a closed gate. Its paint had diminished into a color you wouldn’t even recognize.

He shivers against the cold as he reaches out to the doorbell. He pressed the button down with a clammy finger, but nothing resonated but the clamoring roar of the rain. Then he coiled his own arms around him as he compelled, in vain, to stop the trembling of his own body. He reflexively bent down as a thunder grunted angrily and shut his eyes close when lightning streaked across the skies that look like a silver sheet.

The weariness he had endured during the cab ride seems to have been sucked into an unreachable and secretive depth of his head that there was no thought that slides into his mind but the cold. Cold, cold, his mind was whispering to him; the cold that froze his breath into a cloud. He let his eyes riffle the landscape he was currently on. On the left side of the Daytons’ house is nothing but another file of houses that stretches towards a bus stop. He turned to the right, standing on the tip of his toes as he covered the distance with his hazy sight. There, he found a cafe just two blocks away.

Just as he lifted a foot to take shelter under the café’s roof, his attention became drawn to the flicker of movement coming from the Daytons’ doorsteps. The carved door opened to a young boy clutching on a black umbrella as he hastened towards the gate. When the child delineated a welcoming grin on his face, Brother Maxwell has already straightened up and returned the silent greeting; he had also noticed a dash of yellow paint across the boy’s left cheek.

The boy took out a sheet of crumpled paper from his pocket. It was a gesture that withdrew the pressure inside Brother Maxwell’s chest that made him oblivious of the pouring rain. He watched in amusement as the boy read: “Excuse me, mister, are you Brother Maxwell Seton?”

The boy looked and presented Brother Max of his tousled hair and wide brown eyes. Although he misses a number of teeth, the child still forces out a shy smile. Max bent down. “Yes, young man,” he said. “May I ask of your name?”

The beam that stretched across his flushed face slowly fades. This is lucidly a situation he had never practiced with. “Err,” he hesitated for a moment. “Tristan Dayton, good mister.”

Brother Max felt himself snicker. “So Tristan, how old are you?”

“Nine.” The bewilderment, as Brother Maxwell had seen, is now evident as the glistening of the boy’s eyes.

“I don’t mean to be pushy and all, but I was called to be your sister’s friend and it’s pouring heavily out here so if you could please take me somewhere dry?”

“Then we’ll head straight inside the house, mister.” The young Tristan was deposited with the same youthful enthusiasm he had as he welcomed Max.

“Please, Tristan, call me Brother Max.” Maxwell advised as he stiffened his back watching the boy opening the gate between them.

“If you could take this umbrella, Brother Max.” the kid handed Max the umbrella of which he immediately folded, and ushered the Brother towards the doorway.

“Brother Maxwell, you’re soaked,” Mrs. Lauren Dayton greeted Max with concerned gleam on her brown eyes. But the warmth of the house rendered him heedless of the cold dispersing across his frail body. The mother turned to the boy and bent. “Tristan, I told you not to hold Brother Maxwell for too long.”

The boy Tristan shrugged and rubbed a hand across his hazel hair. “I don’t know,” his voice sounds brittle. “I just asked him of his name, and I did offer him the umbrella.”

“He did offer me an umbrella,” Brother Maxwell testified. He clasped his hands in front of him and stared at the mother and son in amusement. The image was a portal that transformed him into a time traveler, and now hot tears press against the back of his eyes as he weathered a huge deal of loss. “But I turned it down.”

“And why is that, Brother?” Lauren Dayton scurried over towards Maxwell who stood awkwardly by the door. She is aging, he observed. But still the morsels of beauty behind the mask of wrinkles are worth someone’s appreciation. When she speaks, she sounds like a songbird: gentle but emits such insights.

The religious Brother was inarticulate for the moment. He didn’t think what he’s about to say would matter. “I just thought it would be selfish if I would,” he cracked a shy smile. “I mean, I was already dripping so why not just take it all, right?”

Silence had Lauren’s lips compressed together into a thin line. She seems registering Maxwell’s notion into her consideration. After a while, she nodded and grinned. “Well that’s kind of you, Brother Max, I really appreciate that.” She said. Brother Max muttered a dubious thanks. “Let me hang this cloak for you if you like.”

The Gabrielite Brothers’ conveniences shouldn’t occupy much of other people’s concerns and so Maxwell was pervaded with a heap of reluctance as Mrs. Dayton assisted him on shrugging off of his drenched cloak. This had his cheeks inflamed as he never really had this much attention to himself before.

“You know you shouldn’t be bothering with all these.” He said.

“Oh shush.” Lauren insisted from behind him. “If you could just sit and make yourself comfortable, Brother Max, my husband is at the kitchen making you a snack. You know work has been suspended. Jacob, honey, can you say hi to Brother Maxwell?”

“Hi.” A voice spoke from the other end of the house that happens to be the kitchen. Then a man with broad shoulders wearing a hand muff over one hand poked out of the marbled counter. “I need to say that we’re all glad to have you.”

“Yeah speak for yourselves.” The voice sounds muffled, as what Max had heard, like distance hinders its clarity or it comes from underwater. But then he traced the origin of the sound and found his curious gaze locked on the staircase. If Brother Jordan was here, Max thought, his nosiness would have gotten him upstairs. But this thought never remained in his mind for long because even if he is far from being certain, a small voice whispers a name to his hears. It’s Bridget Dayton.

The rest of the Daytons dropped their shoulders. Jacob lost the brightness of his face, Tristan, who resigned himself to a corner crouched by a table, looked at his mother. When Brother Maxwell swiveled back to check on Lauren, her expression had undergone a grim transition. The dark lines that clasped on her face had sunk she looks weary than ever.

When she said another word, the energy in her voice had been shriveled up. “You could take a seat over there, Brother Max, make yourself comfortable,” she advised. “I will have to let our daughter, Bridget, know that you’re here.”

She had jogged across the room and had taken the first few steps when she ceases herself and turned her weary face to Brother Maxwell who found himself staring blankly at the pictures hung above her head. They were images of sunny days and blue waves crashing against the sand; of smiles under a Christmas tree and of precious moments frozen to last forever if not for long.

Max was reminded of what he had missed in his past years- of the pieces of his fragmented past that would have been better right now. He would have splashed some water at his father; he would have opened the presents under their Christmas tree that looked the same for many years. Dear, Lord were they a huge losses, he told himself. But then he switched his imagination to what reality had been to him. He looked upon what covered up for the missing part of his life and smiled.

He thought of the convent that was an overprotective home. Although beaches and commercial destinations are places their virtues strongly despise, Christmas is an important event for them and they celebrate it with unmatched friendship and closeness. The Brothers superseded his loss of parents and brothers and sisters. And if there’s one thing that would have Maxwell ensured, it would be the reassuring fact that the Brothers would certainly never abandon him.

But in spite of the extensive film played at the back of his eyes, Mrs. Dayton’s sad gaze overshadowed his marvels. “I’m sorry about the way she yelled with you around the house.” She said.

Max was infused with subtle appall when Lauren gave his convenience a load of attention. “It’s okay, really.”

“And if you need something just ask for it.”

“You know you shouldn’t really be bothering-“

“Stop saying that, Brother Maxwell,” this time the pressure seems to have evaporated from her shoulders. The grief had embarked on an exodus away from her face. “The more you’ll fend off our help, the more we’ll have to pamper you.” And by that, she rose to the second floor with a series of thuds.

Although virtues restrain him from judging, Brother Maxwell found it inevitable to point out how the interior of the house seems so compressed. The living room is a small square of massive furniture centered by a small glass coffee table. When Brother Max sat, it was as if he was engulfed by the softness of the chair.

Tristan was illuminated by a lamp stand at a desolated corner, though he sat on a stool by the window. The wonder in his eyes marked the passion as he stroked the paint brush against the canvas. When Brother Maxwell’s gaze dwelled on the painting the young boy enthusiastically furnishes, he was instantly insinuated with a pile of wonder.

Maxwell thought it usual for kids Tristan’s age to draw a landscape. He concluded that when he had been requested to watch over third graders. But then Tristan’s art piece exhibited vast grassland stretched towards a line of mountains. Then the whole picture was separated by a yellow dash which was the same color smudged across the young painter’s left cheek. The left side of the image showed daytime, the other depicted the night.

When colors dispersed against the void of his thoughts, bubbles of energetic curiosity rose inside Maxwell’s chest. When he couldn’t stop himself, he rose from his seat and headed towards the humming boy.

The masterpiece is more beautiful under the gray of the daylight. The brightness overwhelmed the simplicity of the picture’s theme which makes insightful thinking, such as Brother Maxwell’s, enkindled with amazement.

Max reached down to pat the boy on the shoulder. Tristan then whipped his head up and lunged at his work so that it was mostly obscured. His cheeks were painted red. “Don’t worry, Tristan, I’m just here to admire your work.” The Brother assured. His words seem tongues of fire that kissed his face.

“Well it’s ugly.” The boy said as he straightened up.

“I love paintings, little one,” Max said, crouching next to the boy as they shared the time in mutual allurement. “They make my mind colorful when I think of the stories behind them. So may I ask what’s behind this?”

Maxwell’s gaze searched for Tristan’s but the boy wandered lost within the vastness of his imagination. But the ecstatic blank on the child’s face induces an air of peculiarity as if he fathoms of a dark abstraction.

For a moment, the youngest child of the Daytons hesitated, but then he said: “I was supposed to be painting my sister’s colorful picture. She has her hair lifted by the wind, but her yellow dress dissolves into black grains of sand.”

“Your gift is phenomenal, you know that?” but the child was heedless of this. Instead, Max veered off of the conversationhe was trying to get into. “How did you come up with this instead?”

“Brie found it and splashed paint on it.”

“Nonetheless this one is perfect,” the Brother said. This sentiment unshackled the pressure that seems to grip young Tristan’s chest.

Maxwell’s mind became an extensive reservoir of words. He attempted to interpret the painting. He loves symbolisms and he is fond of filtering a lot of things into a single word.

“This,” Max said when one final translation came cascaded into his library of ideas. “This portrays how two opposing sides share a single body.”

When the meaning sunk into his acceptance, the boy, Tristan, smiled and peeled his eyes of his work and showed a look of satisfaction to Brother Max. “And how someone could change into a different person so quickly,” he said, snapping his fingers. “So someone has finally spoken of what I’m trying to say here. I’m not really good with words so I paint everything I find hard to say. Actually, no one here is good in words so I’ve been alone in appreciating this thing.”

“Well, not anymore,” But before Brother Maxwell could add another word, Mrs. Dayton had came down the stairs. He forced a breath of frustration to escape from his lungs. Even Tristan seems disappointed with the fact that the Brother should go.

She looked restless. She must’ve borrowed a paintbrush from Tristan so that her tousled hair is in place with a messy bun. Her exhausted eyes seem to betray her persistence to stay awake as they appeared almost closing all on their own. Max thought it unusual for someone to unravel her vulnerability before everything else, but despite all these, she mustered a kind smile.

“She’s ready,” she said. “If you could just follow the stairs and head straight to the first room you’ll see on the right. I’ll have your snack delivered there and don’t you insist. Remember what I said.”

***

Bridget Dayton curled up into a ball on her bed. The slow pace time has undertaken tormented her with the memory of her last night with Arthur Spencer. Day and night had been the same when she recollects her time in a stranger’s house and darkness obscures her vision once she channels herself back in time. It was as if she is being stabbed in the chest visible only to her eyes that no one could help her pull it out. She feels the pain as it synched with the beating of her heart- just as where the boy she loves used to be.

Once the sun has been chained under the horizon and the darkness swirls inside her room, images of that sorrowful night flash across her mind like lightning slicing through the dark clouds of her happy memories. Then this instance would come when she could hear his voice; she could feel the warmth of his lips against hers and could perceive the sweet scent of his neck within the air that passes through her window. Sometimes she would peer through the glass in hopes he would be standing at the lawn, screaming in hoarse voice the sweetest apology. But how can these be all possible when he couldn’t even call her back.

But all these just prompt her of how she was left alone; of how she was holding on to a cliff and that one person she grips onto let her fall. It was as if every morsel of how they had been haunts her and plays with her weakness and compresses her until hot tears would come welling down her cheeks.

She had been up almost every night since she walked home alone, a brown envelope clasped on one hand. Since then, she would stay awake with her lamps burning off the obscurity that creeps into her head and make reality as her dreams because in spite of all the misunderstanding that surrounds her space, this is better than those nightmares that would have her wake up sobbing.

The brown envelope contains files that bother her roughly as well. And she tries to keep herself from reminding her much about it. She hid under a loose floorboard so no one else would come to know of it as she thinks this would help her anxieties from escalating.

She turned until she was laid by the edge of the bed, a gesture that suffused her with remorse. On the wooden floor, enfolded by shards of broken glasses, rested a picture frame displaying the distorted image of Art which caused her heart to skip a beat. But before she could steer her eyes of the photo and the dark memories ignite inside her head, a knock sent her settling on a seated position.

Her mom’s head poked out of the opened the door and then her chest became a melting pot of boiling anger. She was never actually certain about how her rebellious phase sparked. For once her family was the only people who could console her. Her parents were almost a diary, and Tristan’s vivid imagination that hung on her room’s wall, draws her back to how beautiful life is.

But somehow, everything shrunk until the message became clear that life was never fair. When she compelled herself to quit thinking, she had finally concluded that all these were because he had learned that even those you love the most will leave you behind. And now a door bounds her from being overly hurt.

“Brother Maxwell is here,” Lauren told her, a grief stricken mask layering her face. Bridget knows that she had been the root of her family’s concerns, and she appreciates that. But how they stress themselves over her wellness was their own fault since she never really asked for that much attention to herself. “And you need to tidy up your room, young lady.”

Brie crossed her arms over her chest. “I told you, Mom, I don’t need any help. I just need time to recover,” she insisted. Lauren dropped her shoulders. She had lost all the hopes. “Besides, the Gabrielites don’t have much inside their rooms to bother about what’s inside here.”

“But they have much idea as to what a severely messy room looks like.” Her mother snapped and the silence that succeeded bought Bridget the time to run her eyes across the room. Laundry piled up into a mountain on one corner. Her closet stayed open providing a glance of

Creased dresses that hung loose on their hangers. Heat kissed her cheeks as she realized how her room is basically a dumpsite in a house.

Lauren marched across the room and dwelled by the merge of the bed. When she tried to reach out for Brie’s face, the girl leaned away. “Just tell me what you need, dear.”

“I need to be alone, Mom,” Brie said. “And if you were a good enough mother for me you would have figured that out by now.”

The next picture that Lauren’s expressions assembled into pervaded Bridget of the desperate desire to turn back in time. A glint of hidden tears sparkled in her mother’s eyes, but before she could voice out an apology, Lauren had gotten to her feet and smoothed out her pants.

“Come on, dear, fix yourself up, tie up your hair and push everything in that closet,” the mother said. “I’ll help you with everything else once you have already met Brother Maxwell. He’s a very fine young man.”

A young man? Bridget asked herself. Surely, she would have listened to her parents about this meeting. She was expecting the Brother to be of mature age who happened to have been turned down by a lot of girls until he had finally given up and devoted himself to God instead.

But the thought is inappropriate even for the rudest region of her mind. Instead, she tried to construct a bridge between her and he mother who was explicitly faking an excitement, though Bridget wished that her Mom isn’t faking how good a person Brother Maxwell will be.

When Brother Maxwell stepped into the room, Bridget was trying on some of her old dresses. She still looked good with almost all clothes she pressed against her shoulders and now she hums in enjoyment as she sways in front of the mirror. This, she taught herself, is how happy I am when I am alone.

But apparently, the knock had come imperceptible and now both froze as an awkward stillness stood between the two of them. Brother Max fixed his wide gaze to Brie who returned the same baffled glare. She was still clutched on a Sunday dress, the same that she had put on the second time she and Art met.

Bridget intuited Brother Max as somehow older than she is. Although he stood slender and hesitant, wisdom glistened in his dark brown eyes that were almost black. His coppery hair was fixed neatly the way Arthur’s has always been.

“I’m sorry,” said Brother Max. “I was told you were ready.”

For a moment Brie just stood there, feeling the cold sink into her shoulder her oversized shirt has left exposed. But then the Brother endeavored to leave, stepping back and quickly closing the door. “No, wait,” she had lunged from across the room until her fingers coiled around the rim of the doorknob.

And then her breath became a stream of hot air and fire fed on the paleness of her cheeks- this was by the time their eyes have met and although both share the mutual urge to break away from the tension that latched their stares together, it was as if this moment is something each should savor.

There was this silence that conquered over the two of them and from this Bridget was assured that he was feeling the same way she does. It is because the rapid pounding of his heart came almost audible.

Brie was the first one who thawed herself from the petrifaction. “I was just waiting for you.” She said in a wavering voice. Crap, her mind muttered. What was it that she was actually trying to say? Incredulity gushed inside her as she noticed her sanity has been restrained by an inexplicable feeling.

“Oh,” at the way he sounded, Brother Max almost choked on his own words. “Well, I’m Maxwell Seton. Brother Max Seton.”

She took long minutes looking down at the hand Brother Maxwell offered. When she took it, it was cold. “Bridget Dayton,” she said. “It’s nice to meet you. Please, come in.”

“Thank you.”

When the Brother has stepped in once again, Brie has dissolved away from his range of sight as his eyes shot on the paintings that embellished her room’s denuded wall. “Your brother is a clever one, isn’t he?”

Then frustration came flooded inside her chest. Was she expecting he would say something else? Was she trying to hear her name coming from his lips once again? But then she shrugged these stupid thoughts off her head. She decided she wasn’t ready for anything to add up her overflowing mind. Is this even the appropriate feeling for someone like him?

“You should say that to him then.” But then nothing could ever seem to penetrate against his guard.

“I already have,” Brother Max said when she had given up all the hopes from him. “But he’s such a gift.”

“Please don’t tell me you came here just because my brother told you there’s more of his artwork in my room.”

“No,” Brother Max insisted. “I’m sorry but these are just blowing me away.”

“Yup, they tuck me to sleep most of the time.” At this point, Bridget had deliberately mixed a tone of impatience within her voice. “You could seat here if you please.” She gestured one of the chairs that were situated facing the rainy day through the frosted window.

When they were perched faced on each other, the indescribable tension that once grasped on her chest has been overlapped by the hollowness that stirs about the atmosphere. “So what got you hoping you could help me?”

Bridget is twice as certain that nothing could soothe the hurt she feels but the passing of the days. Once she thinks that locking herself inside her room slows time, but then she can’t seem to drag herself away from the place that got her ruminating much on how her life has been. This got her to conclude that no one is of any help and so she likes to toy with the idea. What was there to fix after all?

“I honestly don’t know what to make of these times that we are about to spend together.” Brother Maxwell’s cheeks have blossomed into a rose.

Brie snickered. “Well you could’ve said that before you agreed on this thing.” She said, finally dropping her shoulders at the comfortable tone of the Brother’s voice.

Then a smile flickered on his face, something Bridget, although in unknown reasons, wanted to have taken much more time. “Miss Dayton, a vow of obedience bounds me from neglecting.”

“But how old are you?”

“Sixteen,” the Gabrielite revealed. “I’m turning seventeen this coming April.”

But the next of Bridget’s words were left suspended in the air as a knock reverberated and the door opened to her mother’s smile. Clutched on her pale hands is a tray of hot chocolate and some sandwiches she never knew her Dad is able to make.

“I could see things are getting on the good way,” Lauren said with the smile Brie had never seen from her ever since she locked herself in her room. Was she really this happy to think that she’s finally getting help? “I got you both some snacks.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Dayton.” Bridget had heard Brother Maxwell mutter.

“Oh, please, Brother, call me Lauren.” Her mother insisted.

When things have all settled and her Mom had stood beaming at the both of them, Bridget shifted on her chair. “Thanks, Mom, but I’m not really sure things are going fine between the two of us.” She said cringing at the thought that Lauren would react badly on this thing and that she would have to witness that way her mother’s smile vanishes through a grim changeover.

“At least not yet, I guess.” Brie had no other thing to say that would both relieve the anxiety she endures of offending both her Mom and Brother Maxwell.

“I would strongly disagree,” Lauren debated. “I mean, look at you, guys, getting all so comfortable.”

“Mom, you know you can’t set us up, right?”

“What are you talking about, young lady? Of course not.”

“Then why do you look like a proud Mom?”

There was a pause coming from Bridget’s Mom. She had been rendered inarticulate although the faint rosy glow of her cheeks never got extinguished and the smile was despicable of any reasons to turn into a frown.

Bridget’s face flared once again and as she searched the room with her amiable gaze has she found out that she was actually trying to dwell her eyes on Brother Maxwell. She knows it isn’t wise to yield on the strange connection she perceives going on between the two of them, but then she did and there he was.

Brother Maxwell sat rigidly. Even a wondering sight would see him as being consumed by a mound of discomfort. He also looked mysterious in his dark and austere attire with the cape that draped from his shoulders making his chest appear to be wide and intimidating. His eyes were almost black, although considerate and thoughtful.

Brie was half-aware that she had completely drowned herself at the unwanted desire to get to know the Brother. A part of her knows there’s something that clogs her from being able to do so. But then her eyes studied Brother Maxwell’s for just a little too long that it was just in time for his glare to search for her.

Then their eyes met. Once again they met.

Once this feeling had slipped out of her mind recently, she had thought she would never come across it ever again. But as he drew a smile on his face, she felt all the same. She feels like fire is being injected into her bloodstream and when she grinned back, the temperature seems to escalate at the beat of her heart. Was this how Mom thought we were having a good time?

Then Lauren made a clicking noise with her mouth and the bridge that seems to link both their eyes collapsed. “I’m just going to leave you guys.”

When the door has closed, words were never heard from either of them. There was nothing to say, but flashes of how they both looked at each other replayed behind Bridget’s eyes up until she meandered on the vastness of her imagination. What got her to feel this way? Brie is very desperate to know.

But she was cut off of her trance when Brother Max said: “It must be the marriage Father Gideon talks about.”

He had his eyes shot on the window, its glass hazy at the cold. “Excuse me?” she asked.

“The bells,” the Brother replied. “Could you hear that?”

She compelled herself to shrug off the pictures flickering in her mind. Then the distant sound of church bells penetrated in her senses. “So, there’s marriage when the Church’s bells are ringing?”

“It could mean a funeral service as well,” Maxwell informed. “You would distinguish it through the emotions the tone induces. If it sounds cheerful, there’s a marriage being held inside it. If it sounds mournful, it’s a funeral or to pay tribute to someone’s death.”

“So you ring those things every day then?”

The Brother let out a faint chuckle and it provides Bridget with a shot of fulfillment to hear it. “We only ring them when someone close to the Church dies; usually out of a relative’s or a Church member’s request. So the next time you’ll hear the bells ring at a time unusual for a Mass to go on, just think of either things.”

Brie was overwhelmed by the casual stir of their conversation. She felt satisfied and detached from the weight in her chest that tethers her to the floor. She thought having someone to talk her out isn’t such a bad idea and even if it usually isn’t, she was grateful that it was Brother Maxwell who had served as her friend. He gives off an idea that both were made to have their points meet.

Before serenity could once again triumph over them, Brie said: “You sure don’t know how to talk a lot, do you, Brother Maxwell?”

He looked startled at this, but he was fast to gather up his composure. “I was thinking you would find it uncomfortable if I would.” He said. “Don’t you?”

“Not anymore, I guess,” she replied, tracing the path where his eyes had just froze looking at and she found herself squinting at the cross of a Church from the distance. “I’d like to thank you for that.”

“My pleasure.” He said, although in an interrogative note. He delineated a dubious grin of which Bridget receives as adorable.

“You look cute for a religious Brother,” Once, this has been a remark she prevents herself from being vocal about, but then she could never seem to contain it. “And I actually don’t know why you and your friends are those kinds of people that make yourselves feel bad about having such beautiful and attractive faces. Plus, I think your exaggerating this whole vow thing.

Brother Maxwell looked pestered as ever and his twisted expressions reminded Bridget that there are just matters she should avoid bringing up especially when conversing with people of Brother Maxwell’s status.

But then he recovered himself from her sentiments. “I’m not exaggerating the thing of my vows, Ms. Bridget, I’m actually a postulant and someone of my standing is asked to commit on the Vows already. But there aren’t actually any punishments when you break them. This also goes to those who are solemnly professed. The reprimands are solely up to the person’s conscience and I’d like to stick up to that.”

“A postulant?” snapped Bridget. Incredulity has buried her grace and stimulated her to stand from her seat if it wasn’t because she was holding herself back. “But you just said you’re sixteen. Is that even a validated age?”

“The Pope permitted it. I started off in a very young age.”

“That’s just amazing,” Bridget said, overly drained of words to say now that amazement came rushing in her. “What got you to decide for yourself so early?”

“I never came up with the decision myself,” he said. He looks unmoved by the explicitness of Brie’s wonder. “Fate did and the convent and I weren’t given that much choice.”

“What are you talking about?”

Then the whole situation had transitioned into something very weakening to Brie’s part. Brother Maxwell laughed at the question, but at the same time his eyes welled up. He never really wants to talk about it, but Bridget could not find it in herself to stop him.

“I was left by the convent’s door when I was young, you see?” the Brother’s voice wavered by the time he spoke and although she was supposed to be rewarded at finding out what makes up the vague connection between the two of them, she was made to cower. They were both left behind.

“I was innocent that time, yes,” Brother Maxwell continued. “But aware enough to know that my parents left me for the most inconsiderable reasons. And-“

“Please,” Bridget had the urge to cut him off. She was saving both of them from losing it all. “Just stop, Brother, I’ve heard enough. I’m sorry for ever asking.”

Then the silence she had so desperately kept at bay surged between the two of them. There was this weight in Bridget’s chest that forced her to recoil. The feeling was an abrupt stir in her mood that she seems to have forgotten the way it felt when she was so comfortable. She had become oblivious of anything other than herself- even Brother Maxwell appears distant; or maybe it’s because they share the same load that pounds at their deteriorating heart for him to be hushed.

For once she thought she was alone again- that she’d rather be. She had convinced herself that the world does nothing but afflictions and the rest of it asks you to deal with it yourself. For a moment she was certain that it would be her, once again, alone with her heartbreak.

But the in a matter of a garment’s rustle and a series of thuds against the wooden floor, Brother Maxwell marched from across the room and dwelled beside her in a crouch. When he laid his hand atop her pale ones, the cold startled her and caused her to flinch. But as she stared upon his eyes, the glint looked almost like a dying light in the shadow of his past and he was willing to shine it on her way.

Brie knew he was stranger, but she learned it from herself that friendships start this way- when a stranger meets stranger. Especially now that it was revealed that it is in these instances of their lives where they were abandoned that their paths have crossed; that their ends met.

Bridget knew it stomps at her heart to hear any more of her troubles, let alone that night, but when Brother Maxwell spoke, there was an urge that persuaded her to listen.

The Brother’s grasp of her hand went tense as he coiled his fingers tightly and she found out this was all she needed- the warmth, the reassurance and the promising presence of someone who feels the same she does. “You’ve been on that place where you had to go your way alone, Ms. Bridget,” the Brother started. “I’ve been there, too. And you could actually call me lucky to have seen them for the very last moments. The point is that you shouldn’t take this downfall as a reason to push everyone away from you. I found a family, although very much different they were the best I could ever have. How good could it feel like if it’s your family that’s left of you? Would even ask for anything more?”

This wasn’t all that she wanted to hear from him. Brie thought that his voice made it easier for her to cope up with all the shards that were impaled against her, but there was a whisper that speaks of her satisfaction- that tells her this was all she came to hear of him.

But then she shook her head off to a blank. She was glad she did because this librated her from the restrains of her depressed phase and gave her the freedom to lean forward and bury her face on the Brother Maxwell’s shoulders.

This was one of those decisions that actually paid her right, the other being that moment when she decided that she should stop calling Arthur. He wouldn’t go to pick it up any way and this had taught her that her hopes were all but torture that makes the pain excruciating and taking much more time.

Her eyes were burning at the first moments that she was still holding the tears back. But then she went from restricted sobs until she had finally dropped and knelt with the Brother, making his cape soaked with her tears. Then she could feel his arms gently enfolding at her back.

“We were plotted to be on the same story together,” his voice were vibrations as she pressed her ear against his chest. Forsaken and scarred, Bridget contemplated as she thought of the Brother’s heart, but still beating. “That’s what got me hoping I could be with you through your hard times.”

Deception – Chapter Eight – Torments Arrive

The President’s office was bathed with dense lighting. Senator Wilmut was perched by Ferguson’s desk as he glared low at the chess board. Inside the White House is an atmosphere of coziness; of warmth and of a soothing sense of being at home. Wilmut caught a scent and guided his senses to a cup of coffee that sat by his elbow. It was just another day of being a leader’s confidante.

It was out of question how both were strongly attached to each other. Senator Gordon Wilmut proved the depth of his loyalty was deeper than those who President James Ferguson came to trust. At this point, it was Gordon who had seemed to approach James to attest his reliability and the President had verified him to be better as his own advisers. Establishing a casual partnership between the two of them allowed easier and calmer sessions of planning.

But as it had been countless sunsets that they have witnessed sinking to the ground and the President’s six-year term is inching to an end, Gordon could perceive a bleak transition coming from his superior’s attitude and their friendship made him a bystander to the President’s dour actions.

This unyielding bond between them also happens to haunt the Senator especially now that, although being the least to be hovered onto a hot seat, the citizens who have considered their closeness attributed him to a very inappropriate standing. They once accused him of garnering a share to the country’s taxes, but the Senator, himself, is clueless as to how such process could be made possible. How can a huge heap of gold be distributed? Gordon Wilmut doesn’t know how particularly. I don’t have a vault for all those, his mind whispered to him which made him smile.

When a bundle of things were put much into contemplation, Senator Wilmut concluded that people are not as different from beasts. Wolves, although tamed, could always find a subtle reason to bite you. The point is that one is a puzzle that could never be completed, at least not by a person other than one’s self and Gordon calls it fair that either of them have things they keep from each other- the President’s are his own ways as to how his austere plans are being effectuated and Wilmut’s is his shriveling loyalty.

But on some instances, it couldn’t be assessed as a shrinking fidelity. Does he think it will make any good to his part if the President is forced to abdicate? It would be for the country, yes, but that won’t make him thick enough to be able to endure guilt it pays him with. The weight that subdues him as his trust for Ferguson diminishes is merely to make him discern that he tolerates this for a friend and for a mass of strangers.

There was a faint smile that dashed across the President’s face as he lifted his Knight to eliminate Gordon’s Queen. “I never really believed in luck, but that little victory was proof for that,” he said. “Is something wrong, Gordon?”

There was a long pause of retrieving his poise; of snatching himself from mulling over distracting thoughts. Then the Senator said: “Not at all, Mr. President,” then he leaned forward, resting his elbows atop the wooden table, and pretended to be staggered back by James Ferguson’s move.

James never won at this game against Gordon, but the Senator had let his focus get loose into a blur. “Senator Hadrian Painswick is supposed to be coming back home from his vacation in France tomorrow.” Told Ferguson, pale blue eyes narrowly fixed on the chess pieces. His tone was bitter, almost biting at the sound of it.

Senator Gordon wasn’t surprised. Hadrian has been rewarded with the people’s favors when he proved himself clean among all his other colleagues and it’s no question whether President Ferguson bears a bashful demeanor towards him or not, especially when Senator Painswick’s prominence is threatening to cease the presiding term of James.

“Too bad he’ll have to wait until Dorothy is swept out of the country.” Wilmut said.

James scoffed. “I just wish he’s stupid enough to insist on flying back home so that he’ll be blown to wherever he belong really.” he stirred for a bit then tensed as he dragged his Knight to phase out Gordon’s Bishop. The Senator’s strategy isn’t working out anymore now that his mind is torn.

“And where does he really belong?”

Ferguson tipped back and let his hands drape down the armrest of his seat, letting out a faint laugh. There was a surge of warm bafflement that enkindled Gordon’s cheek. When the confusion came explicitly, the President beamed and with a nod gestured over to the chess board.

Wilmut glared down at the plank of dispersed chess pieces and noticed that his King has been cornered. It was a small depiction of glory to the President’s part, a lucid sign of his ebbing sanity for the Senator.

“I don’t know where exactly,” said James. “But it’s nowhere close to being the President of the United States of America. I mean, don’t you find his campaigns exasperating? Just because his repute as being clean was sensationalized doesn’t mean everybody wants to hear his screeching voice. They televise it, Gordon, and I could see his face every time.”

Senator Wilmut felt it as his lips stretched into a thin line of a smile. He let himself slump back against his chair. Nothing else marks James Ferguson’s win than his overly articulate phase.”That is very clever, Mr. President,” Gordon said. “What are his plans really?”

“That is the clever one, Gordon. I can’t believe Americans are falling for his shrilled statements of him being incorrupt.”

It was true. This is this point where people’s judgments are clouded by their wistful urge to make a change. They are eager as to be unaware of what lies beneath the darkness between them and the light they reach their hands out for.

The Senator pursed his lips as the President continues: “He never really gives any perspective to prop what he really wants for the country. His words are just of proving himself and not of interests on innovating. Why not talk about how he will never be like someone who everybody hates?”

“People are divided, Mr. President,” Wilmut butted in. “You couldn’t say that homeless people are all troubleshooters. You couldn’t say Americans are all better than Englishmen.”

“Just get to the point already, will you?”

“My point is that you couldn’t say everybody despises you. You couldn’t precisely evaluate things that are huddled as a group. We’re a bunch of people equipped with assorted sets of characteristics that are totally different from one another. People who have work and stay at home could be troubleshooters as well. Some Americans could be better than Englishmen. Some Englishmen could prove otherwise.”

“That is an overhyped notion, Gordon, but let’s just say the majority wished to take the crown off my head.”

“It’s overhyped because it’s true and applicable to all kinds of situations and I say America is better off the same as it is right now than being held within Painswick’s pointless clasp.”

The President’s face dazzled with the grin that came about his aged face. Gordon could see the dark pockets under Ferguson’s eyes overlapped by satisfaction. James nodded. “I like that, Gordon, but now that we are able to keep Painswick’s outcry at bay, I have discussed and clarified my plan about when Dorothy hits.”

A string of thoughts sparked in Wilmut’s mind. “The evacuation has already been commenced and I’m happy to know that the Gabrielite Brothers were very vocal about their reliability to accommodate some evacuees.”

“So you had approach them once again?”

“No,” the Senator lied. “Their superior, Brother Christopher, approached me with a letter.”

“And he’s telling you they don’t want to be involved.”

“I know,” Gordon said, shrugging off the truth his thoughts try to vocalize. “But I guess they couldn’t just decline such opportunity to help the people.”

A series of prospective events came flurrying behind the Senator’s eyes. The first time he had stepped into the Gabrielites’ premises, he was met with very austere and despicable behavior. Brother Christopher proves sensible. Even being under their seclusion from the rest of the world, he was able to vividly mull over the current issues circulating about the places and become devoted onto his principles as to fend off the government’s offers.

Gordon Wilmut was nothing but President Ferguson’s fool; he had heard that from the religious Brother and had accepted it. He was a puppet and has nothing that subdues his mind but the honor he strives to pay his superior just as he stepped into Brother Christopher’s way. The Senator couldn’t blame Brother Chris for persisting in believing what he thinks is true. In fact, there was no debating that all Ferguson wants of the Gabrielites is their trust- their allegiance. In that way the era where people of political endeavors and persons of faithful ways are as one would be stimulated into commencement and the President’s sins would slowly inch back behind the curtains, prolonging his term and feast with the country’s money.

Although Senator Wilmut salutes Brother Christopher’s bravery of being open about his opposition, the Brother’s premonitions were clouded by his rage. He never got the pause to ponder about the President’s violent tendencies when it comes to reprimanding those who turn their backs on him. But as much as Senator Gordon insists on never cutting his involvement with James Ferguson, he wants to exclude the Brothers from the peril imminent for them.

On the contrary, he was never able to gain access to the other Brothers’ insights about the government’s approach towards them. What if some of them are unknowing and when Gordon speaks of Brother Christopher’s explicit resistance President James will have them all massacred? Of course the Senator couldn’t move on through his life bearing such guilt and so everything that President Ferguson knows of them is fabricated.

The Gabrielite Brothers are but small people in a storybook.

***

Classes have been suspended once again and at this point it would be for unannounced extent. But things are positive that it would take a long time before the students could come back to school.

Brother Maxwell Seton meandered along the school’s ground as he let his religious habit dance along every breeze of the coppery air. What had been the radiant hum of the children’s conversations was superseded by the whistling of draft of frigid wind. What had once been young ones scurrying across the open were the dispersed leaves winding all over the place.

When the Brother lifted his head to scan the vastness of the dull and heaving clouds, an image of Bridget Dayton flashed from behind his eyes then his body seems to phase out the cold as his heart raced with the same inexplicable feeling he had yesterday when the two first met. Suddenly, heat gushed over him into a cloak.

She was unlike any other girls he had come across with all his life. There was her unmatched beauty of course; her eyes a window to her reserved insights, the way she speaks with confidence and certainty like she was endeavoring to induce this air that tell no one should ever debate against her. But this wasn’t all that had sent a wave of warmth over Brother Max but it was the strange connection occurring between the two of them.

The first time he had dwelled over the glimmer of her gaze got him feeling like part of him wanted to be lifted up and stay for her comfort. It was as if Brother Maxwell could perceive Bridget’s whispered need of an assuring embrace and this injected with the urge to do so. Max is beyond dubious that it wasn’t the fact that between the two of them is the mutual past of being left behind, but instead he thought the electricity that sparks within the space between them and seems to fasten their glares together is something he could have all figured out in time.

Since last night, the unruffled stream of the time he spent would be lapsed with sudden ripples as he envisions Bridget once again; the way she had told him to stop reminiscing with his past. They both have knives skewered against their chests and when she cut him off, she saved them from letting these sharp blades from digging in deeper into their barely beating hearts.

A morning has awaken but Brother Maxwell’s heart is still instilled with the eagerness to reunite with Ms. Bridget; to finally unfold who she really is and to fully prove himself to be of any help for her. But glided along once again was a strong wind of metallic stench and he confirmed it for himself that they wouldn’t be meeting anytime soon. Hurricane Dorothy is approaching.

As his mind took another step onto contemplating what subdues his mind, a distant call of a very familiar voice reverberated ever so faintly it was almost a whisper. He followed the track of the sound and saw Brother Jordan Gabe’s picture poking out the greenhouse’s glass door. The Brother was waving an arm at him, inviting him to come over.

All the thoughts were sucked into his obliviousness as Brother Max felt himself draw a grin across what he could only marvel as his ashen face. He wanted to move but he doesn’t know what tethers his feet close to the ground. Maybe a part of him just wanted to halt for a second and fathom about Bridget Dayton? Nobody had asked him about their session yesterday as he went back home to the convent so maybe all that the retreated half of his mind wanted was to withdraw whatever notions he has in store.

Then a swift beam of light seemed to have pottered across the dark void of his mind and brought up the idea that Brother Jordan is the best listener for Max. At this, Brother Maxwell lifted his garments and put one foot in front of the other, doing the same routine up until he was inching towards the greenhouse.

Through the years the greenhouse had been but an image Brother Maxwell would be left wondering at as he peers through his chamber’s window. As you take a few steps, a massive glass dome would loom in front of you. Max knows that with the illumination of sunlight, the green of the plants it shelters could be seen through the transparent panels fixed all over the house, but as today started off gloomy, the glass were somewhat hazy and the vegetation within is obscure from the outside. Now, as Brother Maxwell stood before the room, the greenhouse appeared to be a giant dark cloud.

As Brother Max guided himself through the rows of all sorts of plants, the first thing that overwhelmed him was the flurry of fresh air mixed with a grassy and sweet scents. Potted flowers rested atop what appears to be metal platforms; some were in full bloom, some were denuded, their petals laid withered on the soil.

Shadows crept within most of the places and the streaks of light that would pass through the thick leaves of the trees at the center would slice through the darkness and provide the young Brother a vague direction.

“Brother Jordan,” he called out, arms stretched to either side as he felt his way through. “I could use some lighting here.”

“I’m right here,” his best mate replied. “I’m sorry, Brother Max, but Brother Chris told to conserve as much as energy as possible so I decided never to turn on the light during the day.”

“But I can’t see anything.”

“Just follow my voice, Brother, I promise it’s bright in here.”

Brother Max shrugged off his peer’s reassurance as it doesn’t seem to make a difference. It sounded almost like telling a blind man that it would be sunny when in fact he couldn’t see anything at all. But it wasn’t how one tall tree could cover up the sunlight from beaming down the whole greenhouse that infused Max with such incredulity, but it’s the fact that the path he’s walking on seems endless and the track of Jordan’s voice seems extensive.

But then something distracted him. “Brother, are those birds I’m hearing?” Maxwell asked.

“I knew you need not your eyes when it comes to observing things. Yes.” Jordan affirmed. “I converted this place onto a multi-purpose area that covers up for three of my projects: to have an aviary, to let plants nurture-“

“How big is this place?”

“Bigger than it appears from the outside.”

“But how did that happen?” Brother Maxwell’s heart began to race. Jordan’s voice still sounds far-off.

“I don’t exactly know,” Brother Jordan Gabe admitted.

“So what’s the third of your projects?”

There was a chuckle coming from Gabe and Max could only imagine his cheeks flushing as they always do when he’s excited. “The same things I wanted you to see,” the older Brother confided. “Could you please hurry over?”

Brother Max took a moment to contain himself after the bemusement induced by the eerie spaciousness of the greenhouse. He swiveled around and let his eyes scan through the wide blanket of shadows. He raised his gaze were the branches of the giant tree that centered the whole place clawed against the glassed dome.

“Brother Max?”

It was Brother Jordan Gabe. He sounded concerned. “Any second now, Brother Jordan,” Max felt himself grin. He was too baffled as to be unable to navigate his way thoroughly. “What’s this tree anyway?”

“I didn’t even bother to know, Brother.”

Then there was a faint gleam of white light as Maxwell pursued the trace of his Brother’s words. It must’ve been coming from a curve. Like a wandering man reaching for the sunlight at the end of a cave, the young Brother ambled his way to the thick sheet of darkness.

Brother Maxwell’s eyes were startled as he reached the room where the black of Brother Jordan Gabe’s habit moved in a graceful dance. There wasn’t a transition; he emerged from the shade to a full blast of blinding light it felt almost like the sun is also sheltered here.

What could have been the light that shone down the rest of the greenhouse accumulated in this single area where there are lots of things worth asking for. Brother Max was compelled to lift an arm over his eyes as he let them adjust to the abrupt brightness.

As he squinted his eyes, the song of the birds sound louder in here and that’s when he noticed a giant cage dwelled on one corner with a variety of birds coming in and out; some glided in and out of the breach at the house’s ceiling. This was the aviary.

“Brother Max, you made it.” Max heard Jordan say.

The older Brother clasped a hand atop Maxwell’s shoulder as he always does as if this testifies their friendship. His mop of red hair was tousled as ever. He hasn’t shaved too, Max thought as he noticed the stubbles along his jaw line. But despite all these foibles, Jordan Gabe’s green eyes was never deprived of their glint that tells nothing but his ingenious ideas; of his wonders and colorful imaginations. When Jordan Gabe took Maxwell by the hand and guided him over to the center of the room, Max felt the roughness of his Brother’s creative palm.

They stood before an entanglement of what seems to be giant tubes that were split in half. Brother Maxwell clapped a palm against one of the tubes and felt it vibrate with what he intuited as a rush of water. It makes sense after all, what protrudes atop these tubes are an array of assorted vegetables.

Words pierced through Maxwell’s mind he couldn’t seem to find the trigger to speak up. There were too many questions to asked “Wow,” was the only thing that slipped through the amazement of his puckered lips. When met turned to look at Jordan Gabe, the older Brother mustered a glorious grin.

“You should’ve wandered all around the convent through the years,” Gabe said as he marched towards one of the lettuces. “I found myself in this greenhouse by curiosity. This was abandoned before, but I spoke of my ideas to Brother Christopher and he thought they were best to restore the purpose to this poor old place.”

Brother Max was still inarticulate. He couldn’t seem to find the perfect way to start asking his queries. This was too much even for an inquisitive mind as his. When he had gone along the pace of his allured heart, he said: “First of all, you managed to make the sun as a pet?”

Maxwell shot his gaze towards the translucent sheets that masked most of the ceiling. When Brother Jordan knew of what he was referring to, he let out a chuckle. “That, Brother Max, is what we call skylight.”

“Skylight?” Maxwell echoed. He never heard such thing before. “How does that work?”

“It enhances the light that passes through it.” Jordan gladly informed. “This is called hydroponics. Inside these tubes are fishes and their interaction with these plants helps them to grow healthier without the use of inorganic fertilizers. That aviary over there is my source of organic fertilizer to boost the growth of all the other plants in here. But since most of flowers I kept in here have withered for the season, my birds will be out of use for the meantime.”

Max was taken aback and for a moment’s notice he was thankful that Brother Jordan had summed it all on him. He never knew his best peer would be so stimulated by his innovative thinking as to wait no further and started crafting his ideas into concrete works. When Maxwell’s disbelief started to rattle his mind, he narrowed his glare on the complexity of tubes that served as proof that Brother Jordan was, indeed, doing what Max never thought he would do. The younger Brother never fathomed him coming this far.

Max grazed a finger against his temple. “Was this sponsored, Brother Jordan?”

“No,” Jordan Gabe appeared appalled by the query. “I would never use the people’s money for my own fulfillments. These tubes were but recycled. The aviary was a gift from the Bishop of many years ago.”

“Has Brother Christopher seen this?”

Brother Jordan froze. This was the second time Brother Max had seen his mate cower at the mention of their superior’s name. “No,” Jordan shook his head as he diverted himself with sprinkling something for the fishes. “He told me he couldn’t sneak any time to do so.”

The older Brother had pivoted and turned his back on Maxwell. As much as Brother Max wanted to push down the question he has in mind, he couldn’t seem to contain it. “Whatever is that grudge you have for Brother Christopher?”

“Grudge?” reluctance marked Brother Jordan’s gestures at first, but then he twirled around and met Maxwell’s thoughtful eyes with his pestered one. “And whatever made you say that, Brother?”

“Yesterday, at breakfast, when Brother Chris dragged you in a hot seat, you seemed to be very anxious.”

Then there was the hesitation once again. It came explicitly Brother Max could hint it with the flicker within the pale color of Jordan Gabe’s eyes. “I just don’t think he likes all of this at all,” he gestured over his hydroponics. Brother Jordan had given in, though it had taken him a load of time. The tension that squared his shoulders has withdrawn and he let out a yielding breath.

“I mean, science and religion are basically two different things- two opposing things, actually,” Brother Jordan leaned against the platform where rested were the churning tubes. Max was astonished; he had never anticipated his Brother to be so divested with joy. “I reacted like that last morning because I thought I had come far enough to make him interested of what I was trying to say.”

Brother Max could barely think of anything to say. He had depended on his Brother for all encouragements and now he can’t seem to skim through his thoughts and cheer Jordan up. “Well maybe it’s time to drag him out of his office by force and usher him in to a tour with your hydroponics,” Max thought it best to say it. “I believe I hardly know someone like Gregor Mendel until you.”

“Oh, hush, Brother,” Jordan shrugged Maxwell’s notions off, but nonetheless the paleness of his cheeks couldn’t hinder anything away for him. His face flushed. “Mendel deserved such recognition as he lent something of his own ideas, Brother; I am merely using references for all my work.”

“The point is that you have the skills appropriate to craft things up,” Max said, which had burned his Brother’s cheeks a little more. “Brother Chris deserves to know if this and you deserve his applause.”

But before either of them could say another word, the convent’s bell reverberated. It was noon- time for lunch- and they have a hurricane to brace themselves for. They retreated back to the cloisters with Brother Jordan’s arm coiling around Maxwell’s shoulders.

The soft clink of porcelain and silverware stirred about the Dining room. Brother Christopher sat by the head of the table fumbling with the linen placemat placed before him as Brother Aloysius marched across the space as he consigned plates and utensils in a graceful dance.

The air was hazed with the delectable steam of what the Italian Brother had prepared and Brother Felix had conducted the convent’s bell into a brief chime. Considering all these very little aspects occurring about the circle of Gabrielite Brothers, Brother Chris could say this a very accustomed moment; another day in the Holy Office. But the blare of the television atop the marbled counter distorts this whole impression.

Amelia Baxter came blurting out a story of which Chris couldn’t seem to mind. “May I help you with that, Brother Aloysius?” he offered.

Brother Aloysius never peeled his sight off his dish, but a smile stretched across his aged face. “Thanks, Brother, but I could certainly manage myself,” he declined, placing the last of the plates he conveyed. “I know it shouldn’t be a surprise for you to know that all these chores make me feel very happy.”

Brother Chris grinned; the news report and the familiar voice covering it still a distant tone for him. “Of course,” he said. “I’m just trying to be of much help as much as you do.”

“Well, I think your good job in tolerating the stress from watching over the students and the other Brothers should satisfy you with that.”

“The responsibility doesn’t fulfill me as much as it should, if I should be truthful, Brother,” a breath tainted with a pint of displeasure escaped from Christopher’s lips.

It was true, what he was saying. He couldn’t perceive any significant standing when merged with his Brothers just by sitting by an old desk behind tall stacks of paper he probably wouldn’t bother to let his eyes skim for a long time. The Head Brother wanted something more laborious; something that would overly extricate the energy from him; would batter him the way Christ the Savior has suffered. In this way, his devotion would be taken into a more allotted depth.

Brother Chris waved off the weary expression Brother Aloysius has casted on him. “But, of course, Brother Aloysius, we should get down into it nonetheless,” this seemed to have thawed the newly recruited Brother into his usual poise. “There’s nothing more devoted to God than indulging with the assignments endowed on you by the Vows.” The Italian Brother nodded his mop of graying brown hair. “Even if it is something beyond from what you desire.”

A series of footsteps resonated along the corridor and it wasn’t long before men in austere and dark robes filed into the room with polished and considerate gesticulations. Father Gideon Bernadone perched himself by the other end of the carved mahogany. Then the rest of Christopher’s Brethren dwelled themselves by the verge of the table: Brother Aloysius Possenti, Brother Matthew Crawford, Brother Charles Alden Lott, Brother Felix Cornish, and Brother Jordan Gabe Bayley and, of course, Brother Maxwell Seton.

For a brief moment Brother Christopher’s eyes lingered around the traded smiles and words churning around the table. It might seem inexplicable at most times but it pervades him with an uplifting emotion to get to know all these people well. He knows that story behind every smile. He knows their every reason of letting themselves be entrapped by the sacred walls of this convent. They were brothers, not just any other, but blood brothers. They love and care for each other as much as they don’t tell it personally.

But as Brother Christopher’s overwhelmed gaze pottered across their huddled group, he happened to lock his eyes through the glass of the frosted window. The wilted branches of the tree seems animate by the blow of wind and now anxiety jolted within him as a river of heat circulating inside his throbbing chest as he prompts himself why this luncheon was very important.

Brother Chris propped his elbows atop the flawless surface of the table and cleared his throat, hushing down the casual tone of whispered conversation. Eyes settled on him and he wasn’t a stranger to curious gazes. “Before we say our prayer, I would like to inform you all that since we are about to be under serious circumstances, I have thought it best if somehow, we could break tradition.” He announced.

“Right now, as you can see, the clamoring of reporter Ms. Amelia Baxter right here is being objective of our rule of silence during mealtimes,” Chris added, letting a smile flicker across everyone’s faces. Even Father Gideon seems to be pleased. “But of course, everything we do, we do for good. I just wanted to make it clear for all you that you shouldn’t go doing anything you please for your own good. We have set a television here so that we could all be updated with what’s imminent for us. We should know about Dorothy together.”

Shared nods circulated along the group of Gabrielites. A moment as this gets Brother Christopher to let out a sigh of relief sometimes: the way all of them seem to be recipients of split mind and idealisms. It makes the propounding of discipline and strict rules much easier and undertaking of an unruffled stream.

Brother Chris made a clicking noise with his mouth as an expression of fulfillments and led his Brethren. “Shall we pray?”

As a commencement all sealed themselves with the Sign of the Cross. Then they recited: “Bless us, O Lord, and these, Thy gifts, of which we are about to receive from Thy bounty. Amen.”

The brief deliverance of the prayer was concluded with another Sign of the Cross, but not long before Brother Christopher’s attention was snatched by Phillip Ruskin as he covered up for a news report.

The anchor informed them: “To recommence with his political campaigns, Senator Hadrian Painswick is bound to fly back to America after spending what he had stated as a quality time with his family in France. However, the approaching Hurricane Dorothy, which is expected to be one of the strongest to ever penetrate against certain States, intervened with his endeavors thus postponing the Painswick family’s trip back home. It is known that Senator Painswick has been proving himself favorable to the Americans as he puts himself as a presidential candidate.”

Brother Christopher shook his head, shedding his eyes off the television screen and set the voices from the televised news onto the background. His heart pounded rapidly as excitement came flooding into him. In a year President James Ferguson’s prolonged presidential term would be cut off and Brother Christopher’s chest seems to convey a weight as he marveled at how it took Ferguson six years of fooling around.

But as what it did to the Painswick family’s trip back home, Hurricane Dorothy is a dense mist that was a brume to Brother Christopher’s thoughts, but he was partially thankful that he was suddenly set back onto contemplating about what’s inching towards them: the wrath expected to be exhibited by the storm.

When Chris, assessing himself as too feeble to completely draw himself together, couldn’t seem to handle the voices that whispered a disarrayed set of notions to him, he glared down at his plate and incrementally let the metal turmoil sink deeper onto his obliviousness.

“Brother Chris?” it was a familiar voice, a tone of youth and of infinite wonders. “Are you alright, Brother Chris?”

Then Christopher’s head seems to be pounding with searing pain and his vision altered onto a blur. It almost appeared to be like an invisible dagger piercing against his skull, jolting sweltering twinge across his body as he pressed a finger against his forehead in hopes that it would help to relieve everything for him. But it didn’t. It feels to him like each of his heartbeat is priced with more of the hurt that came gushing into his temples. It hurts so bad that the only thing left missing is a river of blood stickling down his face.

Brother Chris felt a hand gently clasping on his shoulder. It was Brother Jordan Gabe, green eyes wide with panic as the younger Brother attempted in vain to shake him into his sanity. But as his body quivered, it seems to make him more delirious.

The world was veered off into a hazy slow motion that made bile rose up to Christopher’s throat. He closed his eyes shut to transition the bafflement onto complete nothing, but not before he witnessed the way Father Gideon slicing his knife through the fillet at his plate.

The world’s eyes seem to have focused on that scene and Brother Christopher’s gaze was stolen for a moment to zoom in as the blade was stroked to cut through the meat. “Brother Chris, what are you feeling right now?” asked Brother Jordan.

Against the dark spots clouding his vision and their threat to seize him off his consciousness, Brother Chris mustered a smile. Everyone knows Brother Jordan Gabe is no doctor, but his eager curiosity took him to a lot of different platforms.

The question makes sense though. What was he feeling? Is this a sign of a disease? But Chris slowly overwhelmed the dispersion of the pain, he found himself answering: “I don’t know,” he said, still running a sweaty palm across his forehead. “You know I get all these weird feelings when something bad is on the way. You all could call it a premonition but I would like to call it panic.”

But this doesn’t seem to relieve the concern that proves evident among everybody’s faces. “I’m alright now,” it was true though.

A stream of breath cascaded out of Christopher’s cracked lips and this seems to clear everything for him. The black that warned him to let him slowly slip away from his senses starts to subside thus setting clear sight. “I’m okay now. I feel fine.” He assured.

Then it didn’t take long before the room switched back to its casual atmosphere. The episodic pang that nudged at Brother Christopher’s head took just a swift moment, Chris was sure, but tolerating that pain came to him as taking that concise happening in slow motion. The recovery occurred suddenly it was like the light was flicked off then switched back on again.

But anxious stares were immediately attached to the television screen as Amelia Baxter tremblingly spoke: “. . . declared a State of Emergency as Hurricane Dorothy is expected to landfall this very evening at an alarming speed and intensity. Everybody is required to be prepared. Stay indoors and make sure to be of sustainable supplies. Forced evacuations are to be effectuated in flood-prone areas across the State.”

Time has swept for the Gabrielite Brothers as a rapid stream of tension and anxiety. Delirium is brought by every gliding of the wind and the cold almost whispers death. What was more dreadful is the eerie stillness coming from the fragile leaves dwelled atop the frozen ground. The trees were returned to their inanimate petrifaction. For a moment, the silence served a hint that Dorothy is sucking in all the strength she could store within herself as she will unravel them any time soon.

Brother Christopher Stein trudged across the school’s circular clearing. Pebbles grated under his shoes as he lent his ears at the series of thuds by the roof. Chris has summoned John and Ed to ensure the durability of the buildings. Brothers Charles and Aloysius both have their sleeves rolled up to their elbows as they clasped gloved hands on hammers, pounding. Brother Felix and Brother Maxwell were sent to do a last minute grocery.

Brother Chris had finally settled by the school’s entrance where he had drawn a weary smile across his face to auspice the reluctance exhibited by Brother Jordan and Father Gideon’s stooped postures.

The two seems to be the perfect choices to usher strangers into their premise. Brother Jordan Gabe’s jolly demeanor and friendly nature would make a warm greeting. Father Gideon’s repute as a priest provokes an air of reliability and reassurance. At this point Brother Chris seemed to have taken himself out of place.

He had merged himself with a pair that contrasts his set of personalities. Children have laughed with either of his peers but the students cringe at the sight of Christopher’s sharp and austere gaze. But nonetheless, none of his flaws seems to be standing out as Jordan and Father Gideon returned the dubious grins.

Brother Christopher joined his hands together at his back as three buses jerked into a halt in front of them. Curious eyes blinked as they peered through the icy window. Chris sucked in a breath of cold air as he met eyes with his Brother and the priest. “Let’s give them a proper welcome, shall we?” both nodded.

Then a black car was parked by the end of the line the three rented buses drew. Chris felt his heart sink at the incongruous emotions churning about his chest. That car had been here before and so as the man that emerged out of its glistening door.

Senator Gordon Wilmut’s palm was callused and cold as Brother Chris reached out to him for a handshake. The first thing that Chris noticed from the Senator was the glint of sadness that glimmered behind his blue eyes. His face speaks older than what Chris could think he actually is, but against all these, his smile was genuine as he mustered it.

“Brother Christopher,” he said. His tone was calm and casual, expressive of the several times both he and Brother Chris had met, but hindering the unlikely flow of these brief times they have shared words. “It was really nice of you to give these people a safe haven for the mean time.”

Christopher perceived the pressure lingering inside him depart from his chest and be layered by the calmness from the Senator’s voice and at this instant he felt himself cast a genuinely pleased smile. “Well, I’m glad you trusted us with this matter.” Brother Chris said.

He and the politician spoke as if there wasn’t any misunderstanding churning between the two of them. But then this might be the perfect time to be heedless of that- at least just for now. What’s imminent for them means something more than their opposing beliefs and attachments. If they would recommence with their feud whilst being under an unpredictable wrath of a super hurricane, it would sound supremely childish and nonsensical.

Wilmut let out a ghost of a chuckle. “Well I know you wouldn’t have to think twice about this.” He said and at this instant he had marched from Brother Chris to Father Gideon to Brother Jordan, offering his hand for a gracious shake.

“We have purchased you some supplies,” Chris could hear Gordon say to Father Gideon. This cleared Christopher’s chest from the stress. He said a whispered thanksgiving. “We got you some food, water and medicines, but I don’t think the drugs will cover up some serious cases so I guess we’ll have to pray for the best.”

Father Gideon nodded in agreement and clapped a hand against the Senator’s shoulder. This was Gordon’s queue, along with the bright beam Brother Jordan stifled across his face, because with these he waved over to the mass of people inside the buses. The doors opened and streamed out was a swarm of cold and distressed people.

These were the casualties to those many times when D.C was swept by flashfloods that took people’s lives along its tread. Their faces are now lucid picture of trauma; a depiction of the fear of being drifted back to those dark moments especially now that another storm threatens to wreck a much bigger havoc. Brother Chris could feel the fright they all bear.

Then as Brother Chris scanned the persons filing into the gates, he noticed Senator Gordon gesturing him over to a desolate spot by the sidewalk. He was reluctant at first, but then his eyes dwelled on the way the Senator’s lips were puckered and instantly discerned of how urgent it must be.

Chris turned towards Father Gideon and Brother Jordan who both wore expressions expecting him to say anything towards them. Brother Chris felt the priest’s shoulder as he said: “If you could please take it from here, Father Gideon?”

The Father appeared baffled. Surely, he had grown used to having Brother Chris ordering around and hovering things into appropriate places. But then a twinkle in his aged eyes spoke of how he had seen it for himself that he could manage. Father Gideon bobbed his head and led Jordan Gabe towards the men that passed on boxed of canned foods and bottled water.

“You might think that I am just deceiving it, Brother Chris, but I truly am grateful that you have accepted this task. You’ve done these people a huge favor,” Senator said to Chris. They were on a distance where the chattering of the evacuees was nothing but an incessant hum. “And don’t you ever think that I’m still doing this to tether your trust to our side, Brother, this had been a personal request and something that I do by heart. I don’t want anything from you in return.”

Brother Chris was caught up by this moment that got him so incredulous. At some point, the Senator’s words were an arrangement of sincere melody he would gladly stick his ears on, but the truth passing the politician’s lips overwhelmed the Brother.

Chris wishes this time is translational to at least a single words he could say, but nothing ever came to his mind to say of how much he believes Gordon and of how much he was thankful for it. “Okay.” This was the only thing he could gather to speak.

For the first time, after silence weaved itself as a massive blanket that swathed the whole of nature, a phantom of a cold breeze spoke. But Brother Christopher’s heart sunk and his teeth were clenched as the wind seems to be voiced of desperate warning. This was when he, amidst the contemplation as to whether this moment sparks genuine friendship between him and the Senator, fixed his eyes on the distance and was astonished by the dense ball of dark clouds that loom beyond.

The view seems to have impaled the Brother’s heart with needles. He knew that time needs to be speeded up. But then he stole his glare from the threat that marches towards them and considered that man that stood before him. Gordon Wilmut’s eyes were glistening with hope, his smile something that erased that ragged dashes from across his face.

Brother Christopher decided to speak up without breaking the chains of his virtues. He mustn’t lie. “I firmly believe that between the two of us, as of now, is a shared pursuance of what is good and selfless-“

The Senator pressed a palm against his forehead where strands of graying hair hung. He was shaking his head. “However will I have to strip down myself and prove to you that what I am doing isn’t influenced by my political endeavors, Brother?”

“Oh, don’t you think I would shake myself off the shackles of my principles, Senator,” Brother Chris waved a hand at him. “I don’t lie when I say that I’m glad that we have something that we could put between the two of us and this is something not of what we would want for ourselves but something we insist to offer to the greater good. I believe that you have decided about this denuded of what’s been infused in you by the President and that we stand here, right now, not as a religious Brother and a Senator, but as two people. We are all blemished mantles, Senator, and right now we have faced to make use of it as something we share.”

Brother Chris clasped his hands before him, tugging them into the warmth of his cloak. The last moment they have been standing before each other secluded from the rest of the world, he had shaken a deal with the Senator. Not only was this decision triggered by the encouragements of his charity, but because there seems to be something that gleams beyond what a shadow Senator Gordon is.

Though carefully obliterated, Chris could perceive the way Wilmut tries to prove himself clean. It garners the Brother a sense that Gordon is hindering a plot in mind and despite Christopher’s usually suspicious air; he seems to be conveying an urge to unraveling it for himself. After all, it’s something what Brother Chris could fathom as a sunrise poking out of the dawn.

Chris stole a breath from the frosted air and continued: “But I rather that I am yet to collect who you really are, Senator, you’re something worth unfolding,” Gordon appeared impassive at that, but his face was tainted with subtle hurt and surprise. “And for me to get to solve one heck of a puzzle you are, I’m giving you as much as chances as long as it wouldn’t go any political extents.”

But then Christopher’s attention was instantly snatched as a sky blue dress danced with the gliding wind from the distance. Heat surged into his cheeks, searing at the sight of skin smooth as cream and of golden locks that fell in waves.

At this point, he seemed to have been invited back to those moments where future awaits by its shore as time appeared to be frozen- paused and replayed to embracing atop the greenest of the beds of grass; of flowers picked and of traded kisses and words of love.

Brother Chris curled his fingers into fists as he knew time would be lavish as to make itself slow. But tonight and the days ahead wouldn’t be like those he cherished and wished to keep playing back. From this point on, torments arrive pristine.

“Would you kindly call for an aid of one of our Brothers, Brother Max?”

Brother Maxwell’s throat itched at the stark cloud of combustion the departed taxi cab has left. Paper bags of ingredients dwelled by the sidewalk as he and Brother Felix curled their arms around some other carriers. Max could hardly meet the older Brother’s slanted gaze with the vegetables he hovered in front of his face.

Both Brothers were sent to sustain the convent’s supplies into sufficiency. It’s been one of a few times Brother Max had breathed in air also a lot of people inspires with, but today wasn’t such a good experience. Lines at every shop’s counters were extended towards their exits. The sudden strike of adversity disregarded manners among those who were about to face it. Even against the distinction uttered by their dark cloaks and belted robes, Brothers Max and Felix had been oftentimes swept aside by desperate strangers. Some manifested gazes that seem to be blinded from the two and some let their shoulders graze theirs a little too hard for one of them to be phased out of his equanimity. Shelves in groceries were cleared off by big purchases and streets were desolated as showers of rain, the specter of a violent storm, poured down Pockettsburg, Washington D.C.

That’s why tension was withdrawn from Maxwell’s chest as he and his companion stood before the looming heights of the Church, school and convent. On the other side of the skies, Brother Max sighted with freezing fear, were the heaving black clouds of Hurricane Dorothy. It’s advancing.

When Brother Felix had requested for some assistance, there was no other person that flashed across Maxwell’s mind than his best peer, Brother Jordan Gabe. Max was assigned on his own task as his Brother was allotted to his own: ushering the evacuees in.

As Brother Max trudged along the convent’s lawn, passing through the metal gates, he discerned for himself that he had almost forgotten of a more serious undertaking impending before him and his Brethren and that is to accommodate a mass of people whilst being under the wrath of a super hurricane.

Maxwell’s heart sunk as his social anxiety began to be triggered. This time, he was scurrying along the convent’s hallway that linked to the side entrance of the Church. He took this route to elude the dense attention coming from a sea of people he has to battle with if he takes the main way in.

Muffled sounds lingered into Maxwell’s senses as he stood before the giant wooden double doors of the Church. He clutched on the cold and rusted handlebars and after taking a deep breath of the frigid atmosphere pushed his way into the circle of huddled strangers.

Pews were disarrayed and fixed on certain spots where families and relatives could seclude themselves from each other. The whole wide room was bathed with the mixture of white and golden lights, both illuminations coming from the fixtures that hung reliably from the dome of the ceiling. But the greater gleam of the Church was coming from the altar where the towering image of the Crucified Jesus, along with carvings of angels and the Holy Mother of God, where casted with lights. Maxwell scanned the crowded space of whispers and saw candles flickering at the end of the room. It is where the faithful are allowed to preserve their hopes.

For once, Brother Max was thankful he appeared unnoticed. He knew that any time soon, the electrical supply would be cut off and that they would see by the old candelabras and the restricted beams of flashlights.

Max let his gaze potter. The Gabrielites were but silhouettes bending down to every person that wishes for their help and assurance. Then a flash of ginger hair emerged from a corner and Max almost leapt from what he had found. But before he could commence with the short journey, the lights died down. The abrupt transition left words unspoken and a thick veil of shadows to devour the whole of the Church.

Brother Christopher let his shoulders drop as he slumped back against the brick wall of the Church. This spot is where shadows loitered, keeping themselves from being burned by the faint light casted by the orange glow of the candles. He felt for his cloak and masked himself evenly with it. The Brothers have all distributed their spare cloaks for the evacuees.

Everyone was hushed down into silence, or that’s just how it goes as heavy drops of rain plummeted hard against the Church’s roof in a blaring roar. Right now, Chris got his chin up, wishing the raindrops wouldn’t be tearing through the roof tiles and making holes at the ceiling.

Night came and so did Hurricane Dorothy. This was the strongest ever, Brother Chris confirmed with pursed lips. The strong drifting of gust came perceptible with the whistling sound it induces. Lightning flashed fixing short-lived brightness inside the room and thunder grunted madly, sending frightened children pressing themselves hard against their mother’s embrace.

At this scene Christopher’s memory stirred and switched him back to when Brother Max and his parents were flinching at the episodic and swift flare of lightning by the convent’s doorway. The three of them were soaked, wearing distressed faces- Brother Max, who was boy Maxwell at the time, most of all, though Brother Chris could take hint of vulnerability and confusion from his eyes.

He set his gaze down, binding himself from looking for Brother Maxwell and seeing through the younger Brother’s masquerade of youthful joy the emptiness and loss. He needs to puff his chest if he wanted a positive air to be of prevalence and there’s nothing more he could lean onto confidently other than his faith.

There’s just something that needs to be done even when facing struggles, the Brother muttered. He unhooked the rosary beads dangling from his belt and clutched on it as he lifted a hand to gesticulate the Sign of the Cross in whispered words. But before he could move further with his prayers, a beam of bright light stretched and shone over his face. And as he lowered his arm to get a better view of who called him Chris, a mélange of emotions burst into his chest.

It was Jessamine Thatcher, the love of his life.

Chapter Nine – Deception – Vows Break

A chain of inexplicable emotions penetrated against his chest. Everything was stolen away as it all has been channeled onto this moment, thus rendering Christopher’s mind into a blank- a dark void. What was there for him to do at the moment? Should he hug her? Restrain her in a warm embrace and be despicable of how he broke her heart and left her to pursue his way to his current standing as a religious Brother?

The last time he had felt himself incessantly allured by Jessie’s hazel gaze was after the night of their sixth anniversary, back when their future was bound to be spent together and everything was believed to be finally settled up to that point when the gentleman kneels down and emotionally asks her his love’s hand in marriage. But then this time came when Chris found himself veering onto the road of what is incredulous.

Everybody had faith on the destiny that tethers between the two of them. But after a night of a romantic celebration; of being at their own side of the furnished table and of reaching for each other and passing through the candlelight that stood between them to kiss, Chris have had enough of the tingling at the rear of his mind that kept him up late for so many nights, contemplating.

It wasn’t love, he used to think. He’s not a stranger to love and knows quite well that love is that sinking of your heart when you realize you’ll only get to hold her and kiss her for a lifetime because you feel like it needs to be forever- for eternity. But that greater power that urged him to pick up his phone and end their relationship that day manifested something superior that looms above him and the control of love. He was called to be of Holy Service to God all his life and after discerning it, it answered to the question he so frequently asked of himself: what is missing from him?

We could all presume that Brother Chris met the lavishness of this whole wide world with open arms. He had been given everything: he had the wealth sustainable for him to garner a degree in Psychology, he had a family huddled together by their close ties and once and for all, he had given away his love and this had been returned by Jessamine Thatcher.

But the calling was so powerful he could recall confiding about it to an unknowing friend, but what he bears is something more than what he could ever express his whole life. He could almost hear God leaning close at his ear to whisper words that could only be translated to him as an indescribable string of encompassing emotions ad he had to succumb to it and answer to it.

Brother Christopher grasped for himself that God was behind the curtain of everything he was endowed with and his love for the girl of dazzling golden locks was no exception. Chris was so happy of the blessings the Father poured upon him he felt it a mission to return the favor. But then the only thing, as what it seems for him, which would compensate God’s graces was to leave them all behind- and he took it. God was selfless to never ask a man to give back His goodness, but Brother Christopher insisted that he should, not to be rewarded but to fulfill the hype of his gratitude.

But now everything seems to be a huge mistake as the two of them stood together where silence came stirring about the wide space between them. Brother Christopher’s cheeks were toasted by a touch of searing heat. He wanted to recoil as he never wanted Jessie to see him this way: wrapped by a dull and loose robe while she stood astounding even at the casualty suggested by her sky blue dress, blonde strands of her hair protruding out her braid.

She smiled the one Christopher missed so much. “Chris,” she said with her voice melodic. “Or should I call you by another name?”

Nothing passed through Christopher’s parted lips but the cold breath he had been holding the whole time. There was literally nothing to say. The moment feels so wrong and so right all at the same time. He wanted to reach for her the way he used to and say I love you because it was a mantra that injects him with such urge to hold on to sweet life for as long as his love for Jessie would last.

But Chris shrugged all those thoughts away. Those are notions he would have possessed if his life as a normal person in normal clothes was never rippled. But then he had led himself into the walls of this convent, into the restraints of his Vows so as to put them behind. His current standing is a point of no return.

Chris thawed himself from the momentary petrifaction. “Brother,” he said in an almost wavering tone. “Brother Chris or Brother Christopher.”

“Brother Chris,” Jessamine echoed, nodding with a reluctant smile as she seems to scan him from head to toe. “I find it weird to call you a Brother after-“she cut herself, seemingly pushing something back. “I never really knew you were such a believer.”

It was true. What got the Brother to go staggering back is the way his calling seems inappropriate considering his infallible skepticism about the whole faith thing. He had come to understand human Psychology as to conclude that people merge themselves with religion because there has to be something they believe in and there should be somewhere they should go- towards the refuge of faith as it seems to induce a positive influence towards men.

“I know,” Brother Chris admitted. This whole conversation seems to be comprised of short questions and answers. “I’ve never really found myself inside a Church and now I seem to live in one- or at least that’s how you’d assume that is.”

There was a glint of amusement that flickered within Jessie’s sweet eyes. Is it possible that she could be missing Christopher’s humor? Chris loves to make jokes as much as he could be abrasively sarcastic in his bad days.

Then the Brother’s gaze dropped to the girl’s shoulders, right where her smooth skin which came bear. She was cold; Chris could tell by the way she clasps her hands together in front of him. “Are you cold?” he asked though without enduring any patience he didn’t wait for the young lady’s reply and immediately unhooked his cloak, stepped closer towards her and let it drape over her shoulders. “Don’t you worry; I have a couple of them in my closet.”

Jessamine appears subtly thankful of this she seems to savor the warmth it gives her. “I’ve been missing you for so many years, Chris- Brother Chris,” she said. It indeed isn’t easy for her to have him this way. “And you left me so suddenly with so many questions to ask and so many things to marvel at, but it is nice to see what you chose over me. It’s so delighting to see that you’ve gotten yourself so settled and content.”

There were hurt in her eyes and Chris could feel the sting of hot tears prickling behind his eyes. It wasn’t easy for him either, but then there’s just no point to it anymore. He had made his mark and she had appeared to have dealt with the pain after all. There was this brightness in her expressions that told Chris that she had changed the way she had.

“I’m sorry,” that was the first thing that came to his mind. “I’m sorry that it should take me to feel it for myself to realize that I could be wrong for choosing this over you, Jess,” the name sounds so remote for him. “But then it’s not such a bad idea at the end of it. I hope you understand-”

“I do,” she cut him off with a tender smile. “I really do and I forgive you, Chris, and I wanted to let you know that I love you. I still do, at least a part of me says that.” This time her eyes glimmered as they welled with unwanted tears.

“And I love you too, Jessamine,” this wasn’t a lie and if Christopher’s love of his faith compelled him to hurt this girl then it puts it not bad to still love her. “In the middle of all the prayers I say every single day I would find myself thinking of you. Then I’d realize that I’m praying for you- that you would come to find happiness- a different kind of happiness; that kind you should have without me anymore. And I would pray you would forgive me for ever doing this to you.”

“Well, you were given what you have been asking for.” Jessamine said almost instantly after Christopher’s sentence met its period. “But I doubt the part about me searching for happiness because I couldn’t find it, not in the world without you. And when I thought I found one I-”

Then she reached down for her stomach and slowly rubbed a palm across her belly and Brother Chris came to realize what the gesture meant. How could he never noticed it on the first place?

He should feel sad, but then he wasn’t. It’s just fair, he guessed, the way Jessamine could choose to find someone new over waiting for the time he would come to change his mind. Brother Chris, after all, chose God over her.

Chris pointed on her rounded abdomen. “For how long has it’s been?”

“Just a couple of months,” Jessie said, her face suddenly turned grim and let down. “Four, to be exact,”

“He or she?”

“A he,”

Chris clapped his hands together. “We are surely glad to be the one to welcome him to the Christian world and I’d be glad to meet his father,” he was unsure about the emotions handling all his words out. His mind is still lost. “Where is he, anyway? It’d be better if I’d meet him now, if it’s okay for you.”

Jessamine sucked in cold air. “Like you, Brother Chris, he drifted away,” she said with such tone an indication of the way someone is tired of waiting. Brother Chris regretted of ever having to ask her this query. “But at least I came to see you again.”

“But it’s impossible,” Chris wasn’t sure about this. At this point it seems like his lips keep on blurting out things his mind would’ve never ruminated upon. “You can’t just be alone to raise the child. He’ll come.”

There should be a reason the man left with Jessie’s hopes in his stride, Brother Chris concluded. But whatever that is he couldn’t find it from himself to ask. Jessamine just shook her head, her glare down. “Maybe it would be for another ten years again,” she mustered a reluctant grin on her ashen face. “Like the way it took me before I came to know what became of you.”

“I’m sorry,” that was all Brother Christopher could ever utter after a prelude of eerie silence. Jessie kept shaking her head as if mistakes and remorse horded within her mind and she couldn’t extricate them out. “I’m sorry.” He whispered.

Then there was the hum of the heavy raindrops as they plunged down from the heaving dark clouds and against the roof tiles of the church. It should irk them as the crackle made their ears ring, but the sound saved them both from the displeasure of prevailing serenity and for a moment a reunion of just meeting with each other’s gazes was enough for them to be deposited with such relieved breaths. There weren’t any smile rendered on their impassive looks, they were mutually certain neither has anything in mind. They just stood with little space between them and that was enough.

It is because behind those steady eyes were the flicker of their past; of moments that were left to be marveled upon and bound to never happen again- not after what happened between the years they’ve been together and now that they have finally seen each other.

Then there was a sequence of taps that cut the chain that shackled their glares together then a figure stepped from the background of shadows and enkindles candlesticks, emerging from a silhouette she had been moments before into a lucid picture of regal coat and graying hair.

“Lady Thatcher,” Brother Chris exclaimed, suddenly seared by the presence of the woman he so wanted to please ten years ago. He could feel beads of sweat prickling at the skin of his back. People may have believed in the bindings of his relationship with Jessamine, but he wasn’t in good terms with her mother. “I thought you were bound to England to run things over at Aviary.”

The lady waved a gloved hand, snickering. When she spoke, the thickness of her accent came prominent. “That was when my eldest son, who was to be Baron of the industry, was finishing his studies here in America.”

Chris turned to Jessamine, suddenly jolted with an extensive thread of his past. “I forgot to ask you of your brother.”

Jessie had stiffened herself in a straight posture, appearing to be uncomfortable and exasperated at the same time. Brother Chris could suddenly remember how they used to share the same disdain over Lady Thatcher’s conservative aspects and it so happened that they still do.

The young lady considered the question gracefully. “Well, mother sent him to be baron of Aviary where she met this girl who like colorful feathered hats and is very terrible in the household.” Both women laughed and their shrill reverberated against the debating unison of rain fall and thunder.

Brother Christopher would have found the imagery pretty amusing. He pictured Brandon Thatcher kneading palm across his forehead as his wife stumbles on her dress. But his virtues, of which he had so devoted these past ten years, made a line he shouldn’t step upon.

He steered off the conversation, chest still pounding at the awkwardness of the moment. “I wouldn’t have thought of you preferring to be accommodated in a place packed with strangers.” He said.

Lady Thatcher cleared her throat. “Well, things were compromised. We slipped into a slope between the sudden evacuation and the fast-approaching storm,” she said. Brother Chris felt so at home at the taint of arrogance churning about the old woman’s voice. “If we have foreseen such situation as this, I should’ve booked in to hotel.”

“But today got us into the same platform, I guess,” Brother Chris folded his hands together at his back the way he always does. “The rich and the poor, the free and the secluded.”

“I have to agree on that, young man,” then Jessamine seemed to have dissolved into the background. “And it’s nice to see what you have traded over such life of wealth and love.”

“I have come to discern that those things are but influences that made the world so selfish.” It was deliberate then, the way Brother Chris sprayed a bitter hue on his voice.

“So that’s what got you to sit around all day, living like a prisoner except that you are provided with such fine beds and fairly edible food out of people’s money?” Lady Thatcher snapped.

Then Jessamine intrudes, her twisted expressions suggesting how alarming the conversation had switched into. “Mother, what’s going on?” but Lady Thatched raised a hand masked with leather gloves and clogged all the questions from her daughter.

Brother Chris endured the rapture going on inside his head; of a war ignited between his restrictive principles and defensive notions. He could feel his heart race and his chest being stacked with condensed pressure.

When his voice streamed out of his lips, the tone was wavering. “I never laid a hand on money for ten years, Lady Thatcher that is something I could swear. But instead of the touch of it, I have felt it pass through my mouth to keep me alive. I felt it as it kept me warm all these years and built a roof atop my head to keep me away from the rain.” He declared. “This is what you should take wealth for and never something that you use to make more of it because it makes something out of your name.”

“Yes,” the old woman agreed through puckered lips that was almost a sneer. She was turning red. “I used it to make something out of my name- my family’s name- to bring honor to the Thatchers, but you are a dimwitted, unscrupulous lad who put your family to shame. You were the only child of a widowed Earl who never thought twice and left his lonely father to live a stupid life surrounded by withering bricks.”

“Mother, stop it.” Jessamine, for once, intervened, but she was quickly shrugged off back to the oblivion of the darkness behind them. A part of Brother Chris wanted to bust out of the room and never care if this conversation would go suspended in the air, cut off. He knew Jessie is of nothing but thin wires. She is vulnerable and he knew it by heart that she would cry anytime soon if the heat between him and her mother wouldn’t be extinguished, but only if her eyes aren’t welling now.

But a part of him wanted to defend himself. “He is not my father anymore.” he said. “He said it himself that he would marry once more and raise a big family and be oblivious that he ever hovered me up. He disinherited me-“

“I would,” Lady Thatched butted in, her cracked lips stretched into a malicious grimace. “I would do that to my own children if it isn’t because they were much wiser then your tiny little brain could ever be.”

“This is why you were so permissive of my past relationship with your daughter, weren’t you?” Brother Chris queried. “Just because I am heir to a British rank, you were quick to call an engagement for the two of us because it would make you entitled to wealth twice as much as what you could ever have having only a member of your family into a position. But I could see your eyes roll at the sight of me, but you would risk it all for all its worth.” Brother Chris stood proud of his sentiment. He was composed with such confidence as he knows it would never be used against him as he chose a life of poverty over his true love of Jessamine Thatcher.

“Those are things I would tolerate for the sake of honor-“

“If you were such an honorable lady, Mother, you would’ve never brought this up because that man you’re talking at loved me and is now putting a roof over a head while a slicing storm is in our midst.”

Then that was it. Brother Chris never knew that what would phase out a bold woman open to risky undertakings would be an echo of her mistakes. Now there’s nothing much that Lady Thatcher could do than to point a seemingly hexing finger at the Brother whilst her other arm was pulled by her daughter, Jessamine, telling her to settle in a distance.

“Think about this,” the old woman concluded the argument. “You have a life of ragged clothes and seclusion and of stupid Vows you know for yourself you would fail to keep one day. But out if it is an easy way out- an open field where you could run with the girl you claim to love; a house of servants and clothing of fine thread and expensive worth.”

“I have ruminated upon it ten years ago, Lady Thatcher,” Brother Chris said the truth. “And along with the contemplation was my decision and this is it.” He gestured over the space where he stood. “This is not quite of a vast field but I could walk over it; not a line of suits and ties, but these cloaks and robes kept me covered all these years. I have not the most usual family, but love prevails among me and my Brothers. What else could I ask for?”

But his question hung unanswered in the air. Jessie had taken her enraged mother by the hand and ushered her back to the veil of shadows lingering at every corner. The exodus of the gripping tension smoothed everything out for the Brother. He became apprehensive of the way heat surged under the skin of his cheeks and the way his chest pounded with the hysteria his heart have undergone.

Then he felt the ringing of his ears and the way he could still hear Dolores Thatcher’s words stabbing at his mind. His throat ached with the amiable sting as he cleared it out and for once he was distressed by how the argument had been scandalous and how he took it beyond what he swore to never do. But then the sound of the incessant rainfall must’ve submerged their raised voices into a sweet lullaby. There was nothing wrong to it after all, or at least that is how Brother Chris feels as of now.

He may have echoed it in his mind many times before, but he pondered of it, in an oath that he never would ever again, for the mean time. He marveled of how it would have been for him if he never chose this for himself. He would wake up to day with Jessamine sleeping beside her, liberated from the remorse and grief she bears now. He would come to imagine his father smiling at him, proud of what he has become.

But this is life for him. Life is an endless voyage towards happiness and happiness, for our Brother, was getting to be with the people you have grown to love and have nurtured to love you back; of doing whatever that doesn’t just pleases you but also delights Someone bigger. He is happy this way, thus he could call this a life- maybe a little different, but still.

It is in these moments where temptations are soaring waves high as skyscrapers and you are left paddling away from them, threatened to be drifted along their crushing currents. But after the gripping pressure had absconded from his chest and he was provided with tempting glimpses of how good his life could have been, among all these that he had suddenly grown aware of, one thing stood out for him: Brother Christopher Stein was still clutched on his Rosary beads and so he declined his head and recited, in whispered words, the chain of prayers.

“Epithets are used within the convent to make sure your devotion is encompassed with certain enlightenment, Brother.”

Brother Maxwell was perched atop one of the platforms of the bleachers situated at one side of the gymnasium. The Gabrielites were carefully divided and consigned to organize much of the situation in both the accommodations of the school and Church and Max was happy to be accompanied by Brother Jordan as they diverted themselves with the warm air of a casual conversation. For a moment, though making a clamor considering how heavy it sounds as, the blaring crackle of thick raindrops against the school’s roof was shrugged off to the background.

Since the cutting of the energy supply, a cluster of enkindled candles were collected at the center of the court, just where a massive circle depicting the school’s logo was carefully painted. Huddled all around the bedazzling burst of light, cloaked mostly in the shadows, were a crowd. Some were old with wrinkled faces and graying strands of hair, some were of innocence and youthful inquisition.

Black silhouettes of the Gabrielite Brothers would episodically glide at the scene, tending at every flinch of the children as blinding flashes of lightning succeed every bellow of thunder. Through the sheet of darkness, Max could see Brother Aloysius offering an old man in gray bonnet a bowl of steaming soup.

But against the differences between all these people, Brother Maxwell could observe, one thing came mutual among them all and that’s the same mask of fear and distress everyone is wearing- with the Brothers included.

Brother Maxwell sat leaning forward as he propped is elbows against his knees. He knew Brother Christopher’s counsel would judge this gesture as inappropriate, but the older Brother chose to iron out whatever messes there are in the Church.

By Maxwell’s side dwelled Brother Jordan Gabe, appearing to be unsettled as he constantly shifted on his spot. They were talking about epithets and how Max should arrive with one prior to his induction as solemnly professed. The young one gazed straight ahead, though his sight inhabited on nothing in particular, and discerned that this subject matter came out of nowhere.

“I know what epithets are, Brother Jordan,” Max said. “I can’t just see any reason to speed my thinking of it. It’s not like it needs some sort creativity.”

“It doesn’t, of course,” Jordan agreed. “But see, it is something that would remind you of strong devotion and would infuse you with one- at least that’s how I take it- but my point is that if you wanted it to be as effective as I take it as, you should be sure by the time comes.”

“I’ll have lots of years ahead to be more than just certain.”

Brother Max stopped. His mind said it, but something deeper within him says otherwise. His past flared before his eyes like a film reeling into animation and through this he had recollected that he had become an orphan to a postulant in no time, though the reasons never came lucidly at him.

“Oh, hush, Brother,” Jordan Gabe snorted. “The Brothers had been talking about how you’re so used to our way of living and how you have been reading all these religious texts. Surely, you’ll be an official Brother in no time. Brother Chris reports your performance to the Archbishop and so on.”

“What?” Incredulity jolted inside Brother Max as he pondered of the truth unfolded: religious Men of higher ranks paid witness to his life as a Gabrielite; to his lazy and insignificant living within the narrow wall of the convent.

Consciousness drifted into his mind and suddenly, he feels like bright eyes are blinking at the darn corners of the vast room, glaring straight at him as they regarded his arched back as he sat wearily and how he talks to loud when with his best peer. Brother Max looked down, unable to contain the startling arrival of the pressure, and thought of how things will never be the same for him.

“I thought you have known that since the beginning of time, Brother Max,” Jordan whipped his head to face the younger one, his face flashing with the grim lines of distress. “Now, I’m not sure if Brother Chris would want anyone to tell you that. It might have been forbidden.”

“Not when you meant just now when you said the beginning of time,” Max said, nudging at his Brother. “And you’re not usually subject to Brother Christopher’s sentiments so I guess you won’t have to bother keeping it a secret between the two of us.”

“But I’m pretty sure that you know all too well that the Archbishop made it possible for you and Bridget Dayton to meet, right?”

“Brother Jordan Gabe Bayley, if you don’t want to be paddled for telling other people what you should not, you should learn how to keep your mouth zipped at all times.” Brother Maxwell turned to face his Brother. A flicker of fear played across Jordan Gabe’s face, but this was immediately smoothed out at the sight of Maxwell’s smile. “Anyway, yes, I do know all too well that the Archbishop made it possible for me and Bridget Dayton to meet. But if we could please steer off of Miss Dayton’s case?”

“And why do you think my curiosity wouldn’t get loose from your suggestion?” Brother Jordan teased, but Max just sucked in air tainted with the faint scent of soup. He knew his time with his friend is a time of transparency. “Why?”

Max thought of the warring hatred and sadness glimmering behind the color of Bridget Dayton’s eyes. Within her low gaze is a story that was supposed to be easily weaved with a happy ending, but then she had shrugged off everyone that was there for her.

Her ungratefulness mocks Brother Maxwell. What Max had lost was something she brushes away. But then Maxwell’s judgment of her didn’t spark a flame of disdain within his heart. When he held her within his reluctant embrace, his religious habit soaked with her tears as he endured her sobbing, Max dug a place in his heart for her. He could see how she hates herself for all these obscurity she’s going through the way Max unreasonably despises himself for how he turned out to be.

But Max heaved this long a story away from saying it. “She just reminds me of so many things, Brother Jordan,” he said. “Now if we could get along with another topic?”

“I would be so uncomfortable with anyone but the Brothers and Father Gideon.”

“Would you quit with the social anxiety and change the topic?”

“So do you have any idea as to what your epithet should be?” Jordan Gabe asked almost instantly after Max said his very last word. They both snickered.

Max’s smile never dwindled. “Should you push yourself onto having it anyway?”

“I’m telling you, Brother, it would get you inspired,” Brother Jordan Gabe. “I was born Gabe Bayley- just Gabe Bayley.”

“So how did it turn out to be Jordan?” Maxwell thought of it as a betrayal for someone as close to him as Jordan Gabe to have something left to keep from him, but Max wasn’t mad, he just smiled it off.

Jordan cleared his throat. “Well I was not really the most religious teenager as I am right now,” he shifted on his seat, tilting his head so that he was face to face with Max. “I was pretty indulged with Mathematics and Science and everyone notices that. Then I switched from mistrusting Science to patronizing it. For once, I thought everything had been unfolded and balled into something we now call Science as it is. Every time I have a question in mind, I would search it up and have it answered by reliable researches and discoveries. Scientists claim a lot of different theories that suggest the creation of this wonderful world in so many aspects. That one theory that garnered most favor stated that Earth was formed as a result of an explosion of a giant ball of gas. A lot of them were trying to prove their point and so a lot of them disregarded the idea of God being the Creator of so many magnificent things.”

Max felt his wide eyes suddenly shackled onto Brother Jordan and for once he could feel his lips gaping. And the rain and the thunder and the lightning were nothing more than faint and outlying sounds. He knows of the Big Bang theory, but the scrupulous side of his mind wasn’t auspicious as to allow him to detach himself from the belief that God created us all. Most especially, he loved it when someone talks this way.

But Jordan Gabe continued:

“I’m still not sure about where my side is when it comes to the reality behind the actual origin of us all. I prefer not to ruminate on all those debating theories. My mind rattles with an idealistic turmoil if I ever do. What I care about, as of now, is the fact that I’m alive, endowed with so many things that stimulate my world to spin around. That was then that I realized there are just so many questions Science- pretty much no one in this Earth- could answer and so my obsession with explorations and discoveries shriveled.”

“Then I remember this one time when I finally decided to put on my suit and join my family in a Sunday Mass. At the time, it’s been a while since I stepped upon a sacred place. I never really used to believe there was anything or anyone sacred. Not particularly sacrilegious, but a little skeptic. I hardly prayed because I think that doing it is just talking to millions of particles dancing around the air. But at that very moment, I had a sudden feeling so inexplicable it made me so amazed of what kind of force that got me feeling like that, though it made no sense to me at all. I saw the priest, Father Jerome, march across the aisle and into the altar and I heard something whisper to my ear that made me want to strip off of my suit and wear what Father Jerome is wearing. The leader told the congregation to kneel and as I did, so many words and so many things jolted right into my head and right away I knew that it was God that I’m trying to reach out to and that He is calling me to serve Him.”

“Ever since that day I was completely unsettled. I would grab my grandmother’s Rosary beads and coil it around a loop on my trousers, wearing it everywhere I go. Then I would wake up very early every Sunday to attend the first Mass because I thought it’s the closest I could get to a sacrifice I could do for the meantime. I recited the Rosary each night, staying up late for it when there are classes the next day. Then I read some stories extricated from the Bible. Of all the tall stacks of books I’ve read I couldn’t see how I can’t read the very first history book written. Then after all these, I felt like Jesus being baptized by the Jordan River because I felt so submerged by the way God entrusts me with the Holy Service it’s pretty overwhelming. I have grown to know a lot of scientific facts. I thought everything had been laid in front of me, answered, but then came this calling that is just so indescribable I know this is something that defies any laws propounded by any fields of Science. Nothing could ever explain this feeling and the way I seem to yield to it- this led to my conversion. I believe in God because nothing could ever make Him more real to me than having Him whispering close to my ear. And so I entered the convent and at some point of my time here I read about Giordano Bruno. He was this Benedectine monk who endeavored to contribute to the world of Science. The Church heard of this and had him executed. Our stories are reciprocals of each other, but I chose him to inspire me with my faith. He reminds me that some things are better off as mysteries.”

Then silence loomed above the two of them and as Brother Maxwell glared down at his folded hands, the piercing sound of heavy rain and whistling gust returned. But against all these, there was nothing other than Brother Jordan’s words that came ringing in his ears. The story was just so consuming there were no words that could be traded between the two of them anymore.

But the stillness of the moment was rippled as Brother Matthew Crawford rushed into the gymnasium and stood panting by the array of candles. Dozens of baffled heads whipped to his direction.

Sweat came as gleaming beads by his forehead; his bright gaze suddenly dark as his usually sweet expressions was stifled with utter distress. When he spoke, the words were almost confiscated with his desperate need to catch his breath. “Is anyone here related to a Mr. Whitman?” he declared.

The Brothers, accompanied by a number of evacuees, arrived at the Church greeted by the stern atmosphere of delirium. A circle of wide gazes and gaped mouths huddled by the aisle, within the gathering was Father Gideon and Brother Christopher uttering words in gentle whispers.

At some point the scene induced a surge of warmth against the cold of the night stormy night, Brother Maxwell had thought. The yellow of Brother Christopher’s hair caught every flicker of the candlelight he appeared to be like an angel so indulged into his prayers, but things veered onto an unexpected turn as Max and Jordan Gabe marched towards the cluster of fretful faces.

Lying within Brother Chris’s hold was an old man. His face streaked with aged lines, covered in a dirty white sweater. His feeble hands were desperately clutched on the Brother’s black sleeves. His chest heaved as hoarse voice passed through his pale mouth.

“Everybody, please clear out,” Brother Jordan dashed into the clearing, bending over Mr. Whitman. “What happened?”

For a moment, Brother Christopher sat frozen, hardly distracted by anything as he let his gaze impregnably trail onto the struggling old man, watching the life being leeched out of them. But then Brother Jordan repeated with his urgent question in a much escalated tone.

“He’s asthma kicked in,” Brother Chris said. His voice was wavering and Max could see a glint of restricted tears within the blue of his eyes. He never saw his Brother so vulnerable as this. “He was living alone, but told some of the evacuees that he left his inhaler at home under the urgency of the evacuations.”

It was out of question, Brother Maxwell could observe. Mister Whitman’s chest heaves in such eagerness to grasp for air, his body twitching in suffocation.

“Do we have anything for him?” Jordan asked. The panic stirring within the air tousled his red hair into a huge mess and his cheeks were enkindled by the pressure of the moment.

Brother Chris shook his head. “No,” he said. “I’ve gotten our supplies all checked out, but nothing for this case.”

“Has anyone dialed 911?”

“Services are down and the telephones aren’t working. The wind must’ve taken down some posts or whatnot.”

Then an idea seemed to have glimmered across Jordan Gabe’s expressions. “Brother Max,” an invisible fist of tension gripped Maxwell’s chest. The stress the jolted right into him made his shoulders square. “Could you hurry over to the kitchen and fetch a bowl of hot water. It could clear his airways.”

The rushing stream of things clouded the reluctance igniting within Maxwell’s mind and so he shrugged off any seconds to squander and scurried out of the Church and to the convent, passing through dark corridors and imperceptible turns it that he almost hit himself hard against the wall.

The kitchen was deserted, the surrounding corners dense with shadows save for the table of which protruded was a melting candle. Max is out of breath, providing him glimpses of Mr. Whitman’s struggle until he was certain that it could be one of the hardest ways of falling onto the palms of demise. He had run so fast his feet were numb.

His dark glare scanned the room until his sight dwelled on the stove. He hastened towards the range and immediately pressed sweaty palms against the kettle that was perched atop it. At the heat of its metallic surface, reflexes saved him from being burned and pulled his touch away instantly.

Max then fumbled with the locks of the cupboard, feeling his way in search for a bowl as the beam of light never conveyed the chances to stretch towards the cabinets. He could hear himself cursing, but as porcelain and silverwares clattered, the words were almost incoherent for him. He didn’t even know he was muttering such things.

By the time Brother Maxwell drew out a plastic bowl, his forehead was smothered by beads of sweat as he then poured the hot water onto the hollow container. As he let the steaming liquid cascade out of the kettle, a blinding flash of lightning blazed into the night. Then thunder grunted angrily across the skies. This had caused our Brother to flinch and lose grip of the simmering pot.

Scorching water spattered over the back of the young Brother’s right hand. Piercing pain slithered across his skin he could almost hear the searing liquid as it tore deep into his flesh. Max let out a blaring shrill sting dispersed across his throat, but thunder grumbled once again and muffled his suffering voice.

But then he forced the ache down. He knew there is someone in greater need than he could ever be on the few years ahead. He is dealing with a twinge that would glide by in no time; the man that drove him with such panic as to have his hand burned is battling with death in a very bloody clash. Every moment he fritters away are Mr. Whitman’s chances of holding on to sweet life being siphoned out of him.

Brother Max propped himself and rose from the damp tiles of the room, clasping one hand around the other as he examined the bowl. He saw that he had poured enough before dropping the rest and so he sped back to the Church.

When Maxwell arrived back at the room of conflicted faces, Brother Chris was helplessly kneeled beside Brother Jordan who had stolen the old man onto is arms. Mr. Whitman was still grappling for his life, gray eyes fixed blankly on the shadows pressing themselves against the ceiling.

Jordan’s distressed glare met Maxwell’s and so he gestured for the younger Brother to come close. In a matter of quivering steps, Brother Max could find himself crouched in front of Mr. Whitman. The sound of his hoarse voice was louder beside him, almost speaking of the language of the afterlife.

“Hold the bowl near his nose, will you, Brother Max?” Jordan suggested as he ran his palm across the aged man’s back.

And so Brother Maxwell did as he was asked to do, though his hands were quivering at the tension establishing in his chest and the throbbing of his scorched skin. “Mr. Whitman, breathe the steam in,”

But it made no difference. The patient bent over towards the bowl of steaming water, his chest rising and falling at the fastest pace imaginable, but his gesticulations suggest that he had been deprived of any hopes.; that even when he is thankful of the efforts, he knew this wouldn’t work out and that he had to succumb onto the dominating favors of death.

“Mister Whitman, breathe the steam in,” Jordan Gabe echoed, but then the patient seemed to shake his head in disapproval.

“This wouldn’t help anymore,” Mr. Whitman spoke. Brother Maxwell was startled at how his words came out in such husky notes. “There’s no other way around it, young man.”

Then just like that, he slumped back against Brother Jordan who gently muttered something close to his ear. Whether it was a prayer or the Brother’s persistent utterances of hopes, Max couldn’t quite determine.

Mr. Whitman drew a series of fraught breaths as he grabbed a fistful of Jordan Gabe’s cape. His body jerked incessantly at once then something seemed to have drifted out of him up to an extent that he went limp. Lifeless was he after it all. His old eyes were searching for something within the darkness that cloaked the ceiling. Mr. Whitman, who goes without a first name to everyone in the room, laid rested in the House of God.

Then silence gushed in.

Then the sobs of horrified children and grieved people overwhelmed the deep hum of thunder and the whistles of the slicing gust. If death speaks, Brother Maxwell had discerned this would be its voice. Perhaps angels and saints or even God are masked by the tearful faces of men.

Brother Christopher incrementally extricated himself from the crowd clustering as Brothers Charles and Felix raised Mr. Whitman’s wilted corpse. A small procession of the other Brothers accompanied by Father Gideon followed their trail as Chris had agreed that the old man could take his perpetual rest in his own chamber.

There would be a series of prayers for the man’s soul and although he can’t seem to search it from himself, Brother Chris refused to reveal himself to the emotions that would glide in his room. He chose to be left behind, obscured from the rest of the throng of evacuees as he perched himself back to a dark corner.

While holding Mr. Whitman’s body, it was as if the aged man was slowly melting into something that could slip away. It struck the Brother contemplating at how it must have been as hard for the demising mister as it was inauspicious for him. And as the breathless man tugged at his woolen sleeves, the Brother couldn’t help but tear up.

It was nostalgic to him. As he kneeled glaring deep into the dying stranger’s ripened eyes, he had been prompted of how much of a hurdle it was convincing his family that he had chosen to be denuded of anything he had feasted on before; that he neglects a prolific life and decided to bury himself with seclusion- with silence and prayers and infinite meditation.

But unmasking his choices wasn’t the hardest of all; it was departing from the English estate he had once so called home. He had left behind his family and for family he had meant his father and his father alone. And for once, whispers in the streets were of words about how an Earl’s only child, a remnant of his late beloved wife, had flew off to America to become a religious Brother. There have been a several congregations in the UK Chris could enter, but he didn’t know exactly why he seemed to be called to form a space between him and his past life.

A few nights would have Christopher locked in his room, his face buried on the covers of his four-poster bed as he endeavored to muffle the sound of his father knocking at the door. It had also been for a few days that Edmund Stein had been restless, unsettled by the echoes of his son’s words that got him to fall asleep by Christopher’s door, awoken by servants who would eventually escort him back to his room to sleep.

When the time came of Christopher’s flight, it had been a gloomy dawn. Chris was heavy with doubled layers of knitted sweaters his mother made for him, cloaked in a baggy coat. He had nothing but a messenger bag. He had left his expensive clothes behind being certain that he wouldn’t have much use of them.

Casper, one of their chauffeurs of whom he had trusted for his covert leaving, took Chris by the shoulder and led him out to the blue canvas the skies were that time, studded with stars whose gleam slowly shrinks as the golden rays of the sun pokes out of the horizon, its warm beam stretching across the estate’s vast lawn.

Just as Casper led the car onto a gentle hum and draped gloved hands over the steering wheel, cold breaths were held as Edmund stormed out of the carefully carved double doors. “From now on, I am the only one that’s left of this family,” Chris could hear him yell as the chauffeur reluctantly drove the car to a distance. “My wife is dead and now my ungrateful son is too.”

“Brother Chris,”

All of sudden, Chris had been detached from his reminiscent composure. He poised himself in a rigid posture as he narrowed his eyes through the shroud of shadows that hazed Brother Maxwell’s marveling face, the orange light of the candles caught within the dark brown of his eyes.

Brother Chris wondered whether any of his brethren had taken vague hint of his past from the soft touch of accent tainted within his words, or the formality of his demeanor and the grace that resulted of his careful gestures.

“The Brothers and Father Gideon are blessing Mister Whitman,” the young Brother said. “I went out to come and ask if you would like to join us.”

An image of a lifeless body rested atop a bed of dull sheets surrounded by men in black cloaks flashed behind Christopher’s sights it had almost been projected against the darkness. Chris shook his head. “I’ll have to pass for now, Brother, I’m sorry.”

“I presume it’s alright, Brother,” the postulant had said. Brother Max dwelled on the spot beside him, taking his fair share of the cold air and darkness. No one as young as Maxwell could induce any revered conducts, but the young one’s insightful character had made it possible for him.

“Your walls, Brother Chris,” Brother Maxwell said as they both stared at the multitude of people dispersed within the same room, indulged in their own businesses. Children were starting to get acquainted, molding themselves different shapes out of molten candle wax. Chris couldn’t fathom Max being like one of them. “They have crumbled away, haven’t they? When you were holding poor Mister Whitman in your arms, you look like as if you were looking at a friend you were not ready to let go.”

There was no denying it. Brother Maxwell could read him like one of the books stacked on his table; as if The Life of Brother Christopher Stein, a Worthless Heir was among the young Brother’s collection of bound spiritual texts.

“He reminded me so much of my father,” Chris admitted. “But not in the way of his looks, but in the way he had been living all alone abandoned. He died mourned by a horde of strangers the way servants will console my father on his deathbed.”

Then silence passed between the two of them. Brother Chris was heedless as to whether his superiority still constricts Brother Maxwell, but he considered those several times he had summoned the younger Brother’s advice and thought that at some point Maxwell had grown comfortable being around Chris as to slump back against the frigid wall he also settled himself in.

But Brother Maxwell is of a very inquisitive and articulate composure, Brother Chris had thought, but he shrugged off any dark assumptions and instead presumed that Brother Max had understood quite well to never get any further within Christopher’s story.

“Can you help me with the bells, Brother Max?” Chris sliced through the creaseless sheet of silence spread between the two of them and considering the current situation, silence means the incessant chorus of heavy rainfall and thunder.

Brother Max whipped his head to face Chris. “Brother?” he said.

Christopher sipped in a morsel of the icy air, feeling the cold sting seep into his lungs. “It is in one of these moments that we come together as people. Not as the faithful and the nonbeliever, the old and the young, the rich and the poor, but as people. And now that one of us has departed, we shall ring the bells for him.”

The way to the bell tower was of damp soil and slippery cracked stones that served as a path. Dorothy sang in much higher volume out here, Brothers Chris and Max flinch at the percussion as the skies clapped. The wind were almost blowing from the coldest regions of the earth Chris could endure the surge of frosty touch trickle deep from his habit to his skin. The gust was also brawling with the denuded trees, so strong it could almost send Brother Maxwell toppling across the lawn. Every drop of rain falls were like pebbles plummeting down from the Heavens.

Brother Chris led the way, one hand clutched on a lamplight another clasped on his robe as he raised it in the way ladies do to keep their heels from being caught by their skirt. Silently, Brother Maxwell followed his trail, landing one foot after the other with so much effort. Both were soaked to the bones, quivering.

Chris pushed the withered wooden door of the tower and quickly passed the lamplight onto Brother Maxwell who stood glaring down at his dripping body. Thick ropes linked to the tower’s bells lay hidden beneath the blanket of shadows and without any more moments to squander Christopher coiled shivering fingers around them and pulled.

Against the refrain of the blaring clatters of rain and the deep rumbling of thunder, rhythm reverberated towards a distance that night. The storm sang of childish fear and whispered prayers, Brother Chris had conducted the bells onto a series of notes that spoke of mourning; of remorse and of irreversible tragedies.

Deception – Chapter Ten – Fates Leap

Brother Christopher Stein was sat by his desk, deep in contemplation. He could already feel stubbles protruding from around his jaw line and his eyes coordinated lazily. It had been a week since the last breeze of Hurricane Dorothy had swept by and she had satisfied her number of casualties and level of destruction. Finally, after so many sleepless night, the giant wave this storm was had crashed and sunk deep into the sands of serene surroundings.

Perhaps everything is too still. Dorothy had been too strong it seemed to have channeled even the slightest of the air away from the country. Brother Chris turned on his swivel chair and peered through the scraped glass behind him.

From where he was seated he dwelled witness to the eerie silence. Not even the vaguest whisper of the wind glided by to cause the dead leaves to dance across the lawn. No birds cared for a song and for once there had been nothing but the ringing of the Brother’s ears. It was haunting and irking him all the same time.

Two days after the night of Dorothy’s wrath, the Thatchers have left the provisions of the Brothers. Chris wasn’t able to see Jessamine by this moment as he was left heedless of their departure. He had wanted to assure that the father of the child she bears will come back for the both of them. He so endeavored to give her something to remember, but he had been stripped off of everything as he ushered himself into the doors of the Brothers.

It turns out that Dolores had approached Father Gideon and told him that they will be checking in to a hotel which had ironically just surfaced out of the floodwater. This made it clear for Brother Chris that she had only wanted to draw some space between him and her daughter.

Then a series of taps resonated from outside the door. Brother Christopher had lifted himself up just as a hard fist knocked against the furnished door of the administration office. “Come in,” he suggested.

Senator Gordon Wilmut poked out of the doorway, cloaked in a loose coat that made him appear to be like a detective at some point. Old age might come evident on the dark pockets below his eyes, but the light that merges his smile is timeless. But it only took Brother Chris the least of his moments regarding the auspicious influence of the Senator’s energy, Wilmut should know he was sent here for a rather serious purpose.

Gordon managed himself to a wooden chair carefully situated by the brink of Christopher’s desk, awkwardly slumping back against the cushion. “It’s a pleasure that you have agreed to come and pay us a visit, Senator,” the Brother folded his hands and rested them atop the smooth surface of the table, gently bending over as to prune any more distance between him the official.

“If you could remember you have asked me and my Brothers to accommodate a number of evacuees provided with sustainable supplies,” the Senator appears clear at that. “But there have been turbulences to consider-“

“Brother Chris, if this is about poor Henry Whitman, we have carried out this case pretty well. Contact to his relatives came accessible just as services had returned for our advantage and we have paid much for his funeral and other costs.”

Brother Chris whispered a brief prayer of thanksgiving for this. He’s passed by his chamber so as to be provided with a lavish glimpse of Mr. Whitman’s rested pale body. “But that is not what I am speaking of, Senator Wilmut.”

“Then what?”

Three days after the night of Dorothy the cutting of the electrical supply had been lifted so the Brothers had moved their television set to the gymnasium where everybody have huddles into a small audience as new reports of floods that have not yet subsided became rampant. Along with these stories are the graphics of the casualties and missing persons.

Every night meant fresh news to cover. The only subject that had come in such redundancy was the unchanging depth of floodwater that came engulfing a huge part of the District most of which the homes of the majority of the evacuees seeking refuge under the roof of the Gabrielites.

Brother Chris cleared his throat. “Going back to their homes had been hard for most of the evacuees being held in our care, as you can see,” he explained. “And for as much as they thought it best to reside within our accommodation, our supplies run out and we have actually ran out of rations, Senator.”

It constricts Brother Christopher’s chest to pay witness at how the brisk air gradually withdraws from the Senator’s face. For a man his age, life should permit him to spend the remainder of his days isolated from the troubles in the world. As he travels the circle this world is, he should sit back at the innocence he had so conveyed back when he was younger. Now Chris is instilled with a pang of guilt as he seems to deprive the Senator of his every chances of being happy.

Gordon’s graying eyebrows floundered into a furrow. “So what could I do for you?”

“Three times have I requested from you more supplies, Senator,” Gordon seemed to have cowered at this. “And three times have you promised me that it will be delivered soon. Unless soon had meant forever for you. For the first few days we have lived by the donations to the Church and now we have completely nothing.”

Gordon Wilmut shifted on his seat, hardly moving from his recoil. “I’m sorry but you should have contacted several organizations and charity-“

“Senator, you were the only one who had sauntered along our world of seclusion.”

Then nothing came from the Senator but the time he took shaking his head. For once his lips part as if to say something, but then he seems to hold his notions back. Then, after a while, he had said: “This, I promise you, Brother, will be the last time you will ever ask for it,” he said. His voice was almost pleading. “I will make sure the supplies will be delivered before sun down. Organizations have received the donations from across the globe and I assure you this would be evenly distributed among the victims and the selfless groups that have volunteered to take them in.”

“You know, Senator Wilmut, we all know where those donations go straight into,” bemusement proved explicit across the official’s face. If one person could expose this person’s vulnerability that would be Brother Chris, no matter how prolific and image he is. “And that’s right into your pockets.”

“I could swear before God I don’t take much credit in these affairs, Brother Chris, I swear,” Senator Wilmut pledged. “I come clean save for the bad decisions I have made at the span of my political career. The supplies will be delivered before sun down, this I do, genuinely, promise.”

For once Brother Christopher had been drifted back to when these men had conversed by the gates of the convent. Back when Brother Chris had searched deep within the Senator’s bright but lonely gazes and found a spark of something that whispers a hindered plot to make a change.

He had given the old man a chance that time, partly because it was his duty to be of charitable efforts, and partly because he wanted to unravel for himself the truth behind Senator Gordon Wilmut. Fates leap from either the better or worse sides of life and maybe at this point Gordon had actually stepped upon the line towards the finer things in this world.

Chris gently pushed himself back at his seat, crossing his arms as he scrutinized with thoughtful sights the Senator’s oath. “I have come to trust you, Senator Gordon,” he said. “I have come to expose my congregation to the world when I have shaken a deal with you. Please don’t make me regret it.”

Part II

The Flames

Deception – Chapter Eleven – People Lie

Morning surged into Bridget’s wake tainted with a different hue. She rolled over to her side, peering through the clear window and saw for herself that today was very different. Hurricane Dorothy had dissipated in the atmosphere, leaving nothing more than a graying hue stifled across the sky. The daybreak feels remote to her. Despite the sun being obliterated by the thick envelope of heaving clouds, she felt instilled with energy and positive air.

She had woken up in time which was 5:12 in the morning. She couldn’t get herself later or sooner than that. Her eyes rubbed away the slumber and started to perceive the light of going to school. She had missed five days of classes when these moments have been dark and stomping at her. Then Hurricane Dorothy came of which rate of destruction spanned a week of unsettlement to the people of the District. And for another week, this season had been so upset as to let an incessant cascading of heavy rainfall constrict the level of floods from subsiding.

Bridget hoisted herself up and let her back slump back against the headboard. She had contemplated what must have made her feel as this: her head feels light thoughts seem to gush into her like landslide. She was happy, she could confirm, and for once she had recollected how she had been all wrapped up inside the room for the last couple of weeks, shutting everyone out, crying over someone she had so trusted it had started to make her heart bleed.

But things veered onto a much brighter direction as the blue glow of dawn incrementally dissolves and daylight sprays out of the clouds that were hung tethered close to the ground like a kite. She thought herself stupid for ever acting the way she had during her depressed days. She whispered to herself a curse for being pathetic as to cry for a boy who had broken her heart and for rendering a frail image to Brother Maxwell Seton when she collapsed against his chest and drowned herself with her own tears. But these didn’t come to her in such dominating weight anymore. If she ever thinks about the way Arthur had abandoned her and Brother Maxwell’s story outside the convent, they would quickly disperse into a void. This morning is just different.

She perched herself by the fringe of the bed. For the first time in such a long prelude, her feet had finally touched the cold surface of the floor. She stood up, feeling her joints as they crunched and as she spread her arms like a soaring eagle. Light beams from the small breach under the door and so she opened it.

Mrs. Lauren Dayton has grown used of Bridget’s unusually diligent routine. As a mother, she could be no more than protective and consistently anxious over her family’s welfare when in fact she never really failed on satisfying their needs. She is a glass of overflowing love and care.

Brie had started this habit of early morning rise when she was in fifth grade. Secretly at first, but her mother had later found out about this and argued that a young girl shouldn’t be stressing herself over waking up early to cook herself some breakfast. But this was hardly the reason for it.

Stepping the stones of maturity, she had grown to be fond of nights and so she wanted to savor the most part of the nocturnal phase of time. She had even thought it unfair how people spend most times at day than at night; how humans found it a chance to sleep when night falls into their midst. Once she had endeavored to switch her sleeping schedule but had learned that the unfairness of the world makes sense for people who work and go to school.

“Why so early, dear?” Lauren had marched from the stove to the table where Brie was sat glaring down on her empty plate until her mother placed thin slices of bacon on its surface, much to her fulfillment.

“Stop acting like you don’t know me, Mom,” Brie said. The smile that seems to flicker across her mother’s face told her that she was pleased to have her daughter back. But for some reasons hindered from Bridget, she doesn’t seem to want to talk about it.

“I’m sorry, dear,” Lauren shook her head as she carefully set the frying pan back on the range. “I didn’t mean it that way.”

“I know you never wanted it that way,” Bridget echoed. “I just can’t sleep anymore and I have thought I couldn’t be late now that I haven’t been present in all of my classes for almost a month.” It was true.

“Should Dad and I let Sister Mary Clarisse know about the real reason behind it?”

“No, Mom,” Brie said. She never wanted to let everyone know that she had risked days of lessons just to cry over Arthur. “I’ll just tell them that I got the flu and that I got the shot between those days.”

Lauren remained inarticulate about this. She just stood there, meeting her daughter’s anxious gaze as she let her arms cross over her chest. Her lips were pursed, shaking her head which had made strands of her hair fall from its messy bun.

For a moment Bridget’s chest was hovered by a pressure as she thinks this might be the time her mother would have her final straws drawn. But then she just turned her back on her and started with the eggs. “Just don’t do stupid things, okay, honey?” but Bridget couldn’t promise this- not even to herself.

It had been a decade since the settlement of the Gabrielite Brothers when the Sisters of the Holy Call of the Carmelite Order arrived and erected their own banner in Pockettsburg, Washington D.C. These were the only two Catholic churches situated across the slumberous city of the District. But these two had proven to induce a widespread impact through their charitable efforts. Such beneficial enterprises were the school.

Saint Therese School Pockettsburg was the oldest established learning center in the whole of the city of which stood proud in Gomez Street, though Bridget had never seen it before. Second was Mater Carmeli School Pockettsburg which was exclusively for girls. Instituted at Oxford Street, it had been surrounded by countless shops and cafés which confiscated from the Carmelite Sisters their every chances of experiencing such serenity they strive to acquire. It had recently been rough for Sister Mary Clarisse to restrict her students from taking too much time window shopping and meeting their boyfriends by several of the restaurants and fast food chains.

Bridget was, of course, never one of those girls. She gets herself into facing risky undertakings, yes, but she would never really break the rules. She had a boyfriend, but both have been vocal about a mutual agreement of staying focused in their studies, but right now, as her world seemed to have been pivoted around, her chest races with excitement to get a taste of something new- something out of her.

She had dropped off of the bus and found herself shackled on her feet, scanning the humble premise of Mater Carmeli. Her school was nothing much but a cream-brown-colored building an extension of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church which boasted its age as it was built the year 1898 to celebrate the arrival of the pioneer Sisters and for hopes that their mission would serve a perpetual influence among the people of Pockettsburg.

Her wristwatch indicates 6:28, an accustomed time for Bridget. Hawke would have opened the gates for the first few students that would enter the school and so she pushed herself against the metallic façade and ushered her way into the guard’s house which greets everyone who files into the campus.

“I haven’t seen you around for quite some time, Miss Dayton,” Hawke pokes out of the tree house which also accommodates the guards whilst on their shift.

Hawke’s approachable demeanor and humorous bearings earned him the unofficial title of being the most favored security personnel. He was also Bridget’s personal favorite. If anything is slightly off about him that would be his uniform that is undeniably too small for his buffed physique. The white button down shirt and navy blue pants seem to clasp on his olive skin for way too hard.

Brie pulled out a plastic chair and sat by the guard’s table. Hawke was a walking diary. “I wouldn’t say you were wrong about that, Mister Hawke,” she said in a theatrical tone as she gently pressed her binder against her chest. “It’s been almost a month since I’m gone.”

The tree house was unusually situated under the tree’s entanglement of branches and leaves. It was of a small space windowed with a pane of glass that made it look like it was an aquarium. It served good enough to lodge a desk, two chairs and a telephone that makes the communication between the Sisters and the staffs accessible.

“Dorothy had been rough, huh,” Hawke said. The night shift earned him bloodshot gazes. His voice was husky. “The evacuees have begged for a week more and so Sister Mary Clarisse didn’t have any choice than to suspend the classes. I’ve heard the Gabrielites done the same thing.”

“Well, we’re all in this together,” Bridget shrugged. “But I’ve been gone for almost a month.”

“And I know that you wouldn’t want to talk about it.”

“You’re right,” Brie dropped her glare. Hawke was her only friend in this place, but she seems to be saving her notions for someone else. “So I should probably get going.”

The three story building served a margin for the square expanse that centered the whole premises. Flowers were grown at the open core of the school with the statue of Saint Teresa of Avila overlooking the skies as it blesses her with its gift of light.

But little light stretches down from the looming clouds this morning and as the season moves blooming petals wither down on the damp soil. The entire school was deserted, Bridget could tell, from the way there wasn’t any chuckles and hushed chattering. When she took the flight of stairs leading up to her homeroom at the second floor, the taps of her heels reverberated along the desolated corridors.

The episodic gliding of the cold breeze would whistle of the hymns sung by the congregation celebrating an early morning Mass, but the distance between her side of the school and the Church proves wide enough for her to presume the voices as whispers.

It was after several footsteps that she had gave the exterior of her homeroom a quick scan. A darkly tinted glass door and set of windows present a vague glimpse of what is inside. St. Monica, the sign read where it hung at the top of the door. It was room for Mrs. Jade Banks, the Math Teacher- the same reason why Bridget and her friends crack their heads with numbers and equations first thing in the morning.

She took a seat, holding on to her binder as gently as she could as she succumbed to the stillness of things. This had been how it felt like when Hurricane Dorothy had dispersed into nothing. Birds were mournfully hushed. The clouds were hoisted inanimate at the huge expanse the skies were. For once a morsel of quiet satisfied her, but as this was a different day for her, she tried in vain to force down a prickling sense of excitement banging at her chest. There never used to be a ringing in her ears when she is sat rigidly painting pictures against the whiteboard with her imagination, but right now things were towed out of their boundaries.

Bridget got on her feet, smoothing out the creases on her uniform and headed out of the room.

The hallway that led to the library was conspired to be shelter to certain ghosts. Students have reported seeing spectral nuns roaming around during their overtimes. Stories became rampant of how the school was built atop a cemetery and spirits would come meandering along the darkest corners of this particular area of the campus. Unsettled souls of students who have committed suicide were also said to appear bound to the place where they died, incessantly tormented by what took their lives.

If one tale proves to make one little sense to Bridget that would be the rumored series of unexplained event that are commonly attributed to the presence of the late Sister Angelou. The Sister was one of the three resident nuns to die within the walls of Mater Carmeli.

Sister Joan Patrickson was paralyzed after suffering from stroke, but it wasn’t the disease that led her to the path of the afterlife but instead her old age. She died peacefully in her cloister surrounded by the prayers of her Sisters. Sister Catherine Grayson was one of the first few administrators of the institution and hers wasn’t an easy task. At some point of her charitable effort of taking in some evacuees during one of the many storms that struck D.C, she slipped on the stairs to her chambers and broke a rib. The detached bone impaled itself into her lung and took her life.

But the deaths of these Sisters didn’t occur at the Haunted Hallways as girls who claim to possess the third eye assert it to be. None but Sister Angelou Bracken who, one early morning when one of her Sisters found her missing in her room, was discovered dead. She was sat on one of the seats situated across the Library, the Bible spread athwart her lap.

Miss Nora Headley spread accounts of moving chairs and falling Bibles which threatened the girls from staying late and thus saving the librarian’s working schedule from being extended. But although Bridget agrees with the concept of ghosts and haunting as her religion consents its validation, she is skeptic about the alleged string of haunted happenings within the school’s premises. After all, she wasn’t here for some ghost hunting or search for legitimate evidences that would shift her beliefs.

Sounds of creaking doors and series of clacking footsteps surrounded her as other student’s file in the campus. Bridget likes to go to school in such unaccustomed time because she likes being alone. It makes her happy to get a sense of possessing such wide space for herself and now that she was made certain of other people arriving, the gentle hum of joy she feels through the smile on her face gradually dies down.

Plus, if the tingling eagerness she bears in her chest was a wild animal, answering to its call would be the only way to tame it. She pulled out the bobby pins that held her hair together, letting dark locks cascade atop her shoulder. She crouched down by the knob, picked the lock and secretly led herself into the temporarily isolated room.

The library was dim save for the beam of gray light that stretched from a frosty narrow window breaching the northern wall of the room. The stench dust and ancient paper greeted Bridget in such strength as she placidly pressed her cold back against the wooden surface of the door. When it came to a close with a satisfying click, it had been time that series of footsteps and the swift sound of chattering resonated across the Hallowed Hallways. Brie was jolted with such relief to pull herself away from those people.

Miss Nora Headley’s table was situated by the entrance. Glassed bookshelves clustered together into a small room for her stool, displaying chunky editions of expensive encyclopedias that are ironically out of bounds.

Colossal shelves erected across the wooden floor of the library. Extensive lines of rotting books nobody would probably lay hands on came in different volumes. Their labels were mostly faded and illegible, with their hard bound covers partially peeled off.

Brie sauntered from categories to categories; her arms carefully coiled around her binder that she pushed against herself as if it would jump loose of her possession if she did otherwise. It wasn’t the adventurous racing of her heart that fundamentally propelled her to embark on one of these incoherent missions after all. It was the binder and most especially what was carefully folded between its dark layers.

She kept on meandering along the rows of thickening sheets of dust layered atop paperbacks and hardbound collections. She strained her eyes excavating wilted letters beneath a concealment of shadows as if all she ever desired was to find the book she was looking for. But she wasn’t in for a book; she was into something far different. Then a thud made her heart leap.

She looked down on her heeled black shoes. She had done it. She had step upon what she was aspiring to accomplish for this morning. Bridget hoisted her foot just in time that the skies had cleared out from outside and proved lavish to let through a dazzling streak of sunlight.

By the grim lighting fixed within the compact walls of the library, Bridget glared down on the pestered piece of the floorboard. She had let the tip of her toes misplace a small wooden panel and unravel a hole she had always remarked for herself she was incredulous that she had forgotten it was in Religion section. She estimated it to be of enough depth and width to hide one long brown envelope.

Brie crouched down by the edge of the narrow breach as she apprehensively slid the envelope out of her binder. The grainy touch of the paper led to flicker images behind Bridget’s eyes as she turned reminiscent of the night she had acquired it. This was almost the reason why Arthur had abandoned her whilst slimly absconding from a stranger’s house she was asked to break through.

A string of luminescent days shone after that fateful night, but it was all on the opposite side for Bridget. When she had spent the last few weeks weeping over a dagger in the phase of betrayal digging deep into her fragile chest, she felt like darkness swathed over time. It comes to her as living up to those dark hours.

The thin sheets of paper packed inside the envelope she had snatched from a house were remnants of those frozen moments. For once she thought herself selfish for stealing what turns out to be a file of such deep involvement into business. A business might have been shut down because of its loss. An ambition might have been turned down. But these thoughts were behind her love for Art and his demands.

But only by then she would explore that the words scribbled across the printed faces serve heavy for her. File: Blue-Bloodprint, the label read, and after skimming through the whole stack of papers, she couldn’t quite make out her reception of it. Was it just a joke? Are the people laying hands on such files serious? And so she had thought to play it safe: get rid of it. Bridget was sure of this decision. It would save her from the haunting prospects the files got her to contemplate deeply about.

She carefully slipped the file into her secret fissure. Then she felt for the loose piece of the floor and slowly closed the crevice. She stood up afterwards, running sweaty palms across her skirt as she smoothed out the creases she had made.

Lives of the Saints was one of the thickest and oldest books humbly standing by the filthy rows of the shelves. Judging from its covers, it might have been as old as Mater Carmeli itself; probably what had been the favorite book of the first administrator of this school when she was a toddler.

With such grace she once thought only the Carmelite Sisters could muster, Bridget pulled out the compilation of decaying pages and elegantly rested it on her arms. A cloud of dust flurried towards her face as she spread its covers and cautiously flipped from brittle pages to another, scanning through narrowly separated words that mainly spoke about the devotion of lots of different Saints of the Catholic Church.

She briefly read about Catherine of Siena; of her martyrdom and how she may have inspired the name for that spinning firework some people use during the fourth of July or New Year’s Eve. Simon Stock was a hermit who paid witness to the holy apparition of Our Lady of Mount Carmel who gave him the Brown Scapular. Teresa of Avila served a huge influence that created a towering impact on both the whole of the Catholic faith and the Carmelite Order. Saint Rita of Cascia was an Augustinian nun who suffered through the searing pain the miraculous stigmata had induced upon her forehead.

Bridget could have studied through the whole book of overly absorbing religious tales, but then the sudden click of the door sent her a quirk of surprise. She had almost toppled over the frigid floor with a broken nose and a torn chest from the giant book on her grasp.

It had been all too late for her. She had let herself grow to be too indulged with every morsel of the uplifting stories packed inside a book actually thicker that those of the Harry Potter Series. Thudding heels came audible from outside as the school bell prompted the girls to cluster into the gymnasium for the rites and now Miss Nora Headley is about to enter the room.

She had vigilantly placed back the book to its initial position and had hastened away from open space when Miss Headley opened the door to the room with her soft melodic hums. Bridget’s heart raced as she considers what are bound to happen if she gets caught. It would be excusable to say that she was looking for a book, but then that wouldn’t fabricate for the suspicions of how she managed to usher her way into a locked door.

The librarian’s incessant song was lapsed by her footsteps as Bridget could hear her making her way to the right side of the room, onto the section where Brie could be spotted regardless of how hard she presses herself against the shelves.

She had taught herself that the tone set by the woman’s heels indicated her presence and so Brie fumbled for the straps of her shoes and took them off. With the cold of the floorboard seeping through her stockings and towards the surface of her feet, she scampered for a safe place to hide.

She veered from one shelf to another, effectuating maneuvers as agile as a cat, but Miss Headley’s errands seem to follow her way to the door. She finally decided to duck under the unused table that was consigned at the most inappropriate spot inside the library.

Bridget awkwardly fitted herself under the aged desk by the end of the last shelf which was poised alone on this section. There wasn’t enough of a scope for her to sit and so she ducked, her fingers tightly coiled around a strip of wood that links two of the table’s legs together. This is where assorted selection of torn editions is arrayed. On her left was the wall; on the far right was the door. Before her, through the gaps between books compressed against each other, she could see Miss Headley as she unknowingly inched closer and closer to the young girl.

Seconds hustled themselves in slow motion, providing Bridget all the time she demands to plot a flawless escape plan, but as the librarian’s heeled black shoes tapped its way to her direction precious chances were easily squandered.

But then a fist landed onto a sequence of thuds against the room’s door and for a moment Brie could observe Miss Headley’s legs freeze as she scrutinized the sound. Breaches were visible along her ripped stockings.

Then the lady said: “Come in.” her voice was of an opera singer.

One click and brightness slipped into the dim fixtures of the library. The Student Coordinating Team’s President Natalie Rivera poked out by the door’s frame, clutching on the knob as her brunette hair dangled in perfect waves on her shoulder.

Bridget’s heart went off to a fast sprint as she tried to press herself hard against the wall behind her. Miss Headley’s back was on her, but a flicker of movement and she would certainly allure Natalie’s attention.

“Good morning, Miss,” a deceiving tone played out of the young girl’s mouth. Everyone knows how she presumes she’s better than the school’s staff. “So I have stumbled with Sister Mary Clarisse on my way to the SCT Office and she ordered me to tell you that she wants to see you right after the flag rites- in her office.”

Silence fell between the two for a brief moment. Miss Headley’s working habits have been met with rampant complaints lately and now it seems that she would be getting the price for it. The librarian uncomfortably shifted on her footing. Bridget was beyond doubts the old woman tries to elude the malice burning within the young girl’s eyes.

Bridget’s chest felt condensed with warring emotions. A searing pressure of sympathy churned within her as she thought of the waning prospects of the librarian’s position in the school. But at the same time an uplifting clarity fought for a spot in her heart. The library would finally meet its purpose.

Miss Headley cleared her throat just as Bridget’s arms commenced to tremble and her forehead came out moist with cold beads of sweat. “Copy.” The woman nodded her head.

Natalie’s skirt bristled and the clicks of her heels reverberated along the Hallow Hallways when she departed. A relieved stream of frosty breath skidded through Brie’s cracked lips as peace cloaked the room once again, leaving her shaking off the fatigue out of her arms and wiping her face dry. On her desk, Miss Headley is stacking hardbound books on her table.

Great, Bridget thought. Frustration came tingling on her fingertips as she knew it would take her a much longer time to hustle through the exit. She could hear the muffle tune of the school’s hymn playing.

But then Miss Headley muttered a curse. Apparently, she had forgotten a piece of what she had been hoarding on her counter. Bridget’s gaze followed the track of the woman’s legs as they made their way to the back of the room; just where Brie had been and where the door is obliterated by the angles of the shelves.

Whispering words of good luck to herself, she lunged at the open space laid flat before her. Half of her body made it out of the claustrophobic place, but then the tip of her toes caught the thick sliver of wood, sending her to trip and crash against the cold floor.

Pain shot through her knees, but then heat of the moment is yet to climb up to its peak. Bridget had towed the table so hard she sent piles of paperbacks toppling hard against her back. The weight of the bulky pages pushed her harder against the floorboard and snatched her chances of running for her life. Curses clouded her head as she tried to prop herself with her elbows. Her arms were strained, but although they felt all numbed she brushed off a heap of dusty books off of her.

She had lost track of time when she was finally crouched beside the fallen desk -out of the entrapping mound of textbooks and teacher’s manuals that now lay as a mess on the floor which was caked with a mantle of dust. Relief ironed out the distress out of her sprinting heart. Strands of hair falling loosely out of her ponytail were pestering her vision. She opened her hands before her and saw filth amassed on her damp palms.

Bridget hoisted herself up to her feet. She ran quivering fingers on her skirt as she smoothed out the creases. She lifted her foot, thinking of finally going out of the room when Miss Headley’s looming image stood before her. Brie had forgotten about the whole situation. The sound of her body as she fell, the table crashing hard against the floor, tomes plummeting down and her curses- the string of events that comprised this whole incident all occurred in a clamoring chorus of disaster.

The librarian’s green eyes peered through her eyeglasses that have gently slid down her nose bridge. Was she enraged? Brie could quite determine. Then the old lady pulled her hand from behind her back and handed Bridget her binder. She had grown heedless of it.

“How long have you been here, Miss Dayton?” the miss said through gritted teeth.

The tension found home inside Bridget’s chest once again. She beamed. “Long enough,” she said. Though her reply obscured most of the truth, she assured herself that it was, after all, the truth. “I guess.”

“What got you here?”

Miss Headley’s eyes narrowed in deep scrutiny. “That,” Brie pointed on her binder clasped between the librarian’s freckled fingers. “Of course I came here for my binder. I scribbled on some important notes on that.” Her mind seems to be as thin as air and she could hardly retrieve her composure as to gather up her thoughts. “I tripped while finding it, but I promise to clean this whole thing up.” but she knew she messed up.

The desk’s surface was smooth under Bridget’s sweaty palms where the tip of her finger incessantly tapped on. She was trying to catch up with the passing of time. For one whole hour, her glare had been strictly chained onto the clock that stood high atop the aged frame of the chalkboard.

Sister Louise’s words had drifted back towards the background of her thoughts as Brie steered her heartbeat to synch with every second that gushes by. The nun was struggling to push herself higher up the podium that loomed before her like she was David and the wooden dais was Goliath. Her words came in an almost deadened tone, telling of today’s two essays: Do you think the teachings extracted from the Bible are effective and to cover up modern day’s problems?

It had been simple for Bridget. She was never a stranger for being dubbed the loneliest girl in Pockettsburg, but she liked it and at the same time explicitly expressed such impertinence on how people would call it rebellious for someone to consider the dirt that has become this world. Controversial articles were her winning pieces in contests. The judges were made to digest the abrasive truth behind written phrases penned by a young girl.

For this task, she was brief about her point:

I personally wouldn’t be surprised if one day archeologists would excavate evidence that the Bible is, in fact, a work of fiction; a piece of literature so well-written that has influenced an extensive array of cultures and had made an impact on the aspects of humanity. And if ever it was indeed the language of God translated into words for mortality’s eye, perhaps it ought to be effective for only a particular period of time. The world has changed.

We now walk a world where religion and reality are separated by a brick wall- where those who find “religious” as definitive of themselves are actually the ones to judge others. I don’t think the Christian teachings wouldn’t be of any solution for certain accounts of challenges in this modern era. To prove this, the best example would be abortion and how Christians are vocally against the process. A girl of a very young age was molested and impregnated by a ruthless bastard. Her body isn’t made for such situations yet and it would cost her life if she would have to continue on with the maternal stage.

We must think outside the box of which is our religion.

Bridget was then swift at the second and the last question: Do you believe that God is perfect?

Am I a believer that God is the only thing that’s perfect? She scribbled. She had thought this was some kind of a rhetorical question. But now as the tip of her pen touches the surface of the paper, all seemed to have paused right at that question.

Then she wrote:

I think it goes down to this: Perhaps it is our imperfections that define our perfection; it is either we are perfect as equated to God Who ought not to make any mistakes, or God is imperfect as we presume us men are.

Then the school bell resonated as clear as crystal along the hallways, the gentle hum making its way through the glassed door of the room. A soft, muffled hum of chattering students commenced to stir at the other side of the room’s door. Sister Louise requested for the papers to be submitted forward and Bridget had her arms outstretched as she handed her work down to Maggie Texas when the nun stood by her seat.

Sister Louise’s glare was cast down low when Bridget pulled herself to her feet, her binder once again clasped in front of her. The nun’s pale face was grim within the mahogany of her veil; her hands were carefully obscured inside her scapular where a Rosary is dangling from her belt.

“Is something wrong, Sister?” Bridget’s tone was unknowing, but she was certain what had been laid flat before her just as Miss Headley caught her sneaking inside the library.

Sister Louise stirred. For once, she had appeared to be gravely saddened and Bridget was made to marvel as to whether it was a betrayed expression that the nun is wearing. “Sister Mary Clarisse wants you in her office.” she said.